


Great Gig In the Sky

by blueincandescence



Series: Dark Side of the Moon [4]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: AU, F/M, X-men (2000) - Freeform, X1: Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-18
Updated: 2009-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-13 00:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11748789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: A flash of anger plants a “No Trespassing” sign on his thoughts.“I asked you once; it wasn’t an invitation to move in.”– Logan –





	1. Enough rope to hang herself

Even seated, feet solidly on the floor, this moment feels to Rogue a lot like standing on thin air. Just as if she were defying gravity, the nervous energy collecting under her ribcage pumps currents of warmth beneath her skin, straight to her head. She’s slightly dizzy and too pleased to do more than dart glances at Logan.   
  
It’s absurd, the idea of him and her. A solid unit. Logan and Rogue. Never-say-goodbye, them-against-the-world, together-forever friends-maybe-more. Years spread out in front of them, decades. He promised her something too good to be true, and he’s in her head enough that she believed him. Yeah, kind of absurd. Definitely risky. But no more so than standing on thin air, and Rogue’s done that too many times to be scared of the feeling anymore.   
  
She glances past Logan to the mother and son whose casual touching had bothered her earlier. The boy, face still red from the temper tantrum he’d thrown, vrooms his matchbox car happily on his mom’s leg. All it had taken was a hug from behind and everything in his world was okay. Rogue wonders what would induce Logan to put his arm around her again.  
  
With a piercing squeal, the train jerks to a halt. Logan’s arm comes across her chest to keep her from flying forward. She grasps his leather coat, heart in her throat where Carol’s dog tags hum against her skin. A briefcase hits the wall. Like aluminum, the train crumples and pulls apart.   
  
All of it metal. Magneto.  
  
Light flickers as she stands slowly, turning to kneel on the seat she’d been sitting on. A lingering tear rolls down her check, because he’s here for Logan and it’s nobody’s fault but her own.   
  
The expression on Logan’s face is one of startled readiness. Sparks cascade down the ripped-apart hole at the end of their car. Cape billowing, an older man in a red helmet floats in. He’s a sci-fi supervillain and he should be laughable. Anxiously gripping the top of her seat, Rogue looks up at Logan. He looks back, equally unsure of what, exactly, this mutant who wants a war is capable of.   
  
Logan takes a hold of her shoulder, impelling her to sit back against the seat next to where he stands. Turning her head, Rogue makes brief eye-contact with the little boy’s horrified mother. There are an awful lot of people on this train and, from what the Professor told her, Magneto isn’t the type to lose any sleep over collateral damage.   
  
A similar thought is probably going through Logan’s head. His claws shoot out right in front of her face.   
  
“You must be Wolverine.” Magneto shares the Professor’s vaguely English accent, only it’s the opposite of calming.   
  
Rogue’s adrenaline builds as she calculates just how much strength it will take to rip one of these chairs from the bolts and clobber him with it. She half-stands when Logan starts to move forward, but one raised hand, encased in a black leather glove, stops him dead.  
  
“That remarkable metal doesn’t run through your entire body, does it?”  
  
Logan’s arms go crucifix.   
  
She reaches for the chair, but the armrest jerks up to slam into her stomach. The force of the hit tips her back into her seat and the other armrest crosses over her chest to pin her there. With all of Carol’s strength, she can’t pry them apart.  
  
Magneto doesn’t even spare her a glance as he renders her helpless. His attention is focused on sadism. Logan’s claws spread apart slowly, each millimeter punctuated by his suppressed grunts. Pain rolls his eyes back into his head. Magneto lifts him into the air.  
  
“Stop!” Her command comes out more hysterical than threatening. “Stop it!” She’d say more, but the armrests don’t allow her to gulp enough air to spew out the insults and profanities that would give her the illusion of bravado.  
  
Through clenched teeth, Logan jerkily grits out, “What the hell do you want with me?”  
  
“You?” Magneto chuckles. “My dear boy, whoever said I wanted you?”  
  
Rogue stops fighting her restraints. Her. Not Logan. Magneto wants her. Relief and terror battle it out. With what must be a tremendous effort, Logan turns to look at her. She can feel his panic in her own mind. Rogue’s eyes are on Magneto, who, aside from the getup, is the picture of amused elegance.   
  
“Southaven,” she says, getting him to turn his attention from Logan for the first time. Rogue sets her trembling jaw. Magneto kidnapped Senator Kelly and now he wants her. Southaven is the only link between them. It makes as much sense as any of this does.  
  
“Yes, I know what they did to you there,” Magneto answers gravely. His eyes sweep over the silent, shocked people huddled in their seats. “Mankind can be so cruel.”  
  
“Leave them out of this,” Rogue says quickly. She grimaces an apology at Logan. He’s choking on the need to sink his claws into Magneto’s throat; she can feel the echo of his fury. But there’s only one way out of this, and a fight isn’t it. “And let him go.”  
  
It’s a bargain and all three of them know it. Logan, still floored, renews his pantomime struggle. Magneto acquiesces with a slight nod, pointing his index finger. Logan flies black, outstretched arms breaking the frame as his body shoots through the narrow doorway to hit against the wall. He falls to the ground, unconscious.  
  
Rogue whips her head around to glare at Magneto.   
  
“That was necessary,” he explains evenly.   
  
Like hell.  
  
“My methods are not Charles Xavier’s. But that is exactly why I, and I alone, can give you the justice you seek, for yourself and for all of our kind. You have seen what they will do to us, and you are right not trust them for it.”  
  
The armrests twist into their former position, seemingly freeing her to make the choice that’s not a choice, just as the recruitment speech isn’t a recruitment speech. There’s something else behind it. He wants her for a specific purpose, and she’s not going to like it.  
  
“How do you know so much about me?”  
  
Maybe she can stall for time. Logan said he wasn’t the only one looking for her.  
  
“I am in possession of certain files that were never meant for public consumption.”  
  
Her poker face falters, and the curve of his mouth tells Rogue he knows full well that he has her. Because he has the Southaven evidence.  
  
 _It’s all we need! Once people know the truth, they won’t stand for it. Not for one minute._  
  
Rogue bites down on her bottom lip in an effort to push back Carol’s blind enthusiasm. In its wake, the fact remains the same – Magneto, the enemy, is Rogue’s unlikely redeemer.   
  
He holds out his hand, palm up.  
  
Adrenaline still pumping, she lifts herself off the seat. Her feet dangle over the ground as she glides down the aisle. His smile widens when she puts her hand in his.   
  
“Welcome to the Brotherhood.”  
  
The heavy knot in her stomach threatens to drop her to the floor. Only Carol’s conviction keeps her hovering. Rogue goes with Magneto but she looks back at Logan, willing him to stay down and get up all at the same time.   
  
A man with yellowish green-tinged skin leaps off the top of the nearest train car, leaving behind a large sack. Magneto pats her hand as they float across the tracks and into the station. When they touch down he continues to hold it, like she’s a little girl out on a stroll with her granddad.  
  
“Watch your step, my dear,” he cautions.  
  
Rubble and glass are strewn everywhere. Cyclops, eyelids exposed, is slumped over a broken row of seats. A needle sticks out of his neck. The same kind of syringe hangs from Magneto’s belt, clearly meant for Rogue. The thought that she couldn’t fly fast enough away from him to do any good, even if she wanted to, is less than heartening.   
  
Fangs – Sabretooth, the Professor said – comes out from behind the ticket counter, an unconscious Storm gathered in his arms like a prize. Rogue’s hackles raise. There’s something wrong and oddly suggestive about the pose. The Logan in her head wants to attack him outright.  
  
“Leave her,” Magneto orders.  
  
With a low rumble, Sabretooth drops Storm heavily on her side and steps over her body to fall in line. Jaundice-Man – has to be Toad – keeps too close behind Rogue, grinning a gummy smile. She straightens her posture. Better to be walking out of here on her own two feet than in a bag slung over his shoulder.  
  
Except she doesn’t expect to exit out the front doors right into a full police brigade. A dozen black and whites are parked on the lawn and the officers ducked behind them have their guns trained straight ahead.   
  
The police chief has a bullhorn over his mouth. “All right, hold it. Hold it right there. Stay where you are. Put your hands over your heads. Now.”  
  
With infinite patience, Magneto lets go of her hand to comply. The two cars directly in front of him rise into the air. He gives the cops under them enough time to run for cover before letting his arms drop and the cars smash impressively on top of two others.   
  
The police officers surge forward. It’s to their credit but to no avail when Magneto turns their weapons against them.  
  
“You homo sapiens and your guns,” he says disdainfully.  
  
Like cool wind, a whisper echoes in her mind. Rogue.  
  
Suddenly, Sabretooth reaches out and takes Magneto by the neck. “That’s enough, Erik.”   
  
Beside her, Toad turns. “Let them go.”   
  
 _Now, Rogue. Go now._  
  
The Professor’s insisting presence blows through her mind, stirring her up again.  
  
 _Anna Marie, that’s too dangerous!_  
  
 _The files! We have to know_  –  
  
“Why not come out where I can see you, Charles?”  
  
 _It isn’t worth your life. We will find another way._  
  
 _It was worth my life!_  
  
 _He’s right, he’s right. Oh, chickadee, listen to him._  
  
Rogue shakes her head to dislodge the voices. What other way? Magneto has no reason to kill her. She’ll trick him and get away with the evidence. She has to. She already turned her back on what’s happening at Southaven once. Logan wouldn’t have done it the first time.  
  
 _You don’t really believe it will be that easy._  
  
“Can’t you read my mind?” Magneto asks, tapping his helmet.   
  
The Professor must be having two separate conversations while controlling two people at once. No small feat.   
  
“What now? Save the girl? You’ll have to kill me, Charles. And what will that accomplish? Let them pass that law and they’ll have you in chains with a number burned into your forehead.” His gray eyes roll to his peripheral, capturing hers. “But first they’ll have you again, locked back in a padded cell. Out of your mind with pain.”   
  
It’s not the pain, Rogue thinks, it’s what they do to you when you’re not aware. It’s waking up to someone else in your body and a nurse making conversation about the weather. Chunks of you are missing and it feels like you’ve grown another head, but that’s not supposed to matter because you’ve got clean sheets and green Jell-O.   
  
 _It won’t be that way._  
  
 _It already is that way, that’s the point!_  Carol’s plea for understanding reverberates like pealing bells.  
  
“Then kill me and find out,” Magneto challenges, voice booming again. “Hm? Then release me,” he hisses.  
  
Toad’s hand gently but firmly wraps around Rogue’s upper arm, tugging her forward. Her mind’s so cluttered with Southaven and Carol and her momma and Logan and Professor Xavier that she takes a step.  
  
“Fine,” Magneto snaps.   
  
Under his power, the gun facing the kneeling police chief cocks. Fires. Rogue jumps out of her skin, coming back to herself and the present. The bullet presses into the petrified man’s forehead.  
  
“Care to press your luck, Charles?” Magneto cocks the rest of the guns. “I don’t think I can stop them all.”   
  
The police chief groans as the bullet sinks in harder.  
  
Sabretooth lets go of Magneto’s neck. Toad loosens his grip on Rogue’s arm.  
  
“Still unwilling to make sacrifices. That’s what makes you weak.”   
  
 _Not weak. Principled. This isn’t the way. Let me help you_.  
  
Rogue swallows. Maybe she should…But a helicopter is there, blocking her escape long enough for Magneto to take her hand again.   
  
“Goodbye, Charles,” he says in a clipped voice.  
  
Rogue, I am asking you to trust me.   
  
She tries to match Magneto’s long strides, recklessly letting Carol bring suppressed memories to the surface of her mind so that Professor Xavier will see why she’s doing this and hopefully hate her a little less for it. I won’t let them make me hurt anyone, she assures him, even though she has no idea what she’s getting herself into.  
  
From the pilot’s seat, Mystique bares her teeth in a smile. Magneto helps Rogue strap herself in.   
  
As they lift off the green, Rogue looks out the window. The sight of the guns dropping somewhat reassures her. No one got hurt. There was an easy way or a hard way, willing or unwilling, black or white. She chose gray. When Logan wakes up, he won’t necessarily understand her choice, but he will forgive her for it. Then he’ll come after her. After all, he promised.  
  
She glances over at Magneto, then at the back of Mystique’s and Toad’s heads. Sabretooth takes up the seat facing her. His black eyes are more vacant than even an animal’s ought to be. He’s beyond feral, he’s simple. Controllable. The way the people at Southaven think all mutants should be. Rogue shudders and presses her eyes closed.  
  
The padded cell Magneto threatened her with wasn’t hyperbole. Shame creeps up Rogue’s neck. For countless days after she’d taken Carol’s life, neither one of them had been enough of a person to assume control. When not sedated, she’d thrown her unfamiliar body against walls, ceilings, doors. She was moved from her isolated single on the second floor to the basement and left in a room with soft walls and only a tiny glass window on the door. She punched through it, slicing open her the soft underside of her upper arm nearly to the bone. For her shocked parents on the other side, it must’ve been like looking in on a horror film.   
  
No matter what the doctors said, there was reason behind her behavior, method. Carol’s lifelong fear of the dark was exacerbated in death, bordering on phobic. If they pushed hard enough, they could break through to the light. If they kept absorbing more lives, they could fill the void in Rogue’s head.  
  
She stares up through the black webs floating in front of her vision. A leather glove brushes across her damp forehead, making her flinch.  
  
“Oh, dear. You are in a state.”  
  
Mental fatigue clouds her brain. This is no time for coma-narcolepsy, she needs to be on her guard. Rogue tries to say something sarcastic, but it comes out a half-hearted growl. Come on. She’s stronger than this.   
  
With gratefully borrowed confidence, she thinks, Me. Awake. Aware. Me.   
  
Steadily, her vision starts to clear. At the sight of Sabretooth’s big paws awkwardly pushing a breeze in her direction she almost laughs out loud. Instead, she lets her eyes roll back and her face rest against the window. When in doubt, play possum. That’s what Logan would do.  
  
It’s a few minutes before Magneto finally speaks, his tone tinged with exasperation. “You can stop that.”  
  
Sabretooth makes a grunting noise and the air settles.  
  
Magneto harrumphs lowly. “I should have left you with our friend the Senator, all the good you did me.” Fabric ruffles, like he’s massaging his neck.  
  
“He was distracted, the big puss.” Toad’s chuckles get louder at Sabretooth’s answering rumble. “Aw.”  
  
“Sabretooth,” Magneto admonishes archly. “Use your words.”  
  
Toad nearly giggles with glee, a disturbing sound that Magneto cuts off quickly.  
  
“I shouldn’t think you’d find the destruction of a brother’s once skillful mind quite so amusing, Toad.”  
  
“At least he had something to lose,” Mystique puts in. Her voice ripples with contempt.  
  
Magneto lets out a small snort, but continues in his teacherly voice. “Look at your brother, Toad. And your sister.”  
  
Good lord. That’s one holiday card Rogue never wants to pose for.  
  
“Humans, with their exploitations and their experiments, have driven them to madness.”  
  
The edge of madness, thanks very much. Her balance hasn’t failed her yet.  
  
“They are the reason we do what we must.”  
  
Silence follows that rather ominous pronouncement. How annoyingly circumspect of Magneto not to exposit his entire master plan, thinking her beyond hearing.   
  
Rogue cracks open an eyelid. No city lights break up the clear night sky below, only the faint reflection of the last quarter moon. They’re over the ocean headed…She racks her brain for an internal compass and an idea of distance covered at approximate speeds. Math is Carol’s forte. Logan can track anything. Between the two of them, by the time Rogue feels the helicopter descend, she estimates they’ve gone thirty to forty miles southeast. Not that that information does her a fat load of good since she can’t say with any certainty how much of the trip is over water. Even Carol the Marvel needs rest.   
  
Helicopter landed, Sabretooth reaches for her. Rogue pretends to rouse and gasps a little for show.  
  
“Now, now,” Magneto chides, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to assist her out of her seat. “You’re perfectly safe with us.”  
  
She lets him help her walk, though she flops her head around for the satisfaction of making him lean away. Rogue doesn’t press her luck, as much as she wants to know how and why Magneto’s playing her. Sabretooth is the maul first, ask questions never type.  
  
Rogue tries to seem oblivious while she looks around for any distinguishing landmarks. Zilch. Rock as far as the eye can see and multiple openings like the one even Toad has to crouch to get through. The ceiling a few feet in is ten times as high, with domed light fixtures where normal caves would have stalactites hanging down.   
  
Curiosity gets the better of her, and she continues forward on her own to peek around the corner. Gleaming sheets of metal section off a couple of rooms, possible exits. Another curve at the end of the tunnel makes Rogue wonder how metallic the rock must be for Magneto to have manipulated it the way he clearly has.   
  
Mystique steps into her line of vision, startling Rogue.   
  
“This way,” she prompts, swishing her unclad hips in the direction of the other tunnel entrance. She trails her fingers lightly over Magneto’s shoulder when she passes, putting a hint of a smirk on his face.   
  
And Logan thinks their age difference is pervy.  
  
The floor slopes slightly under Rogue’s shoes the further they move inside. Even lit up and architecturally designed, there’s something inherently dark about going into a cave. The cold and damp doesn’t help. To keep Carol’s unease at bay, Rogue considers the possibility that Magneto is planning to have her work her cares away down at Fraggle Rock. It’s not actually that hard to imagine him overseeing an assembly line of mutants slaving to complete his master machinery of total revolution. Or something.  
  
With such grandiose ideas of what a good lair should include, it’s a little anticlimactic when Rogue finds herself taking a seat in an uncomfortable chair, while Magneto goes around to sit on the other side of his desk. Mystique sets a laptop in front of her. “Mutant 579” is emblazoned across the screen.  
  
“These files belong to you now,” Magneto says, steepling his gloved fingers together in front of him. “What would you like to do with them?”  
  
Rogue’s hands remain her lap. “I want what you tried to trick me with. I-I want a trial. Unless…I mean, the evidence…”  
  
“There’s no shortage,” Mystique replies, sounding almost bored. Her fingers deftly scroll over to a zip file, pulling up photographs.   
  
She clicks on a few idly. Rogue on her back, making unconscious skin-to-skin contact with a medical cadaver. She’d woken up during that particular test and thought she’d killed somebody. Dr. Rao holding up a large, dried-out husk of skin to the camera, while Dr. Banks lifts the rest of Rogue’s stomach to reveal the layer of stone underneath. In the background, the small, blurry outline of Paige Guthrie lies prone. A wave of homesickness washes over Rogue. She misses brothers and sisters she never had. Gloved nurses kneeling on linoleum. Rita looks around helplessly. Vicky, who has Rogue half-dragged out from under the bed, is caught in an expression of revulsion. The color photo clearly captures the milky red eyes, white-yellow fuzz, and drooping whiskers that were the result of long-term contact with short-lived lab rats.   
  
The force of her desire to slam the laptop shut and never, ever have to relive Southaven again is fairly overwhelming. Eyes stinging, she crosses her arms over her chest and concentrates on watching her breath hover in the air.   
  
She doesn’t see Mystique click on the sound file, so when Dr. Demille’s voice, her slow drawl pitched to be coaxing, comes out of the speakers Rogue doesn’t hold back a noise of derision and distress.   
  
“Tell me about Jeffery Garrett.”   
  
A long pause follows.   
  
“He didn’t regain consciousness for days after you left. We were very concerned.”  
  
Rogue hears something unintelligible.   
  
“Pardon?”  
  
She listens to herself respond through clenched teeth, “He doesn’t want his power anyway. I just borrowed it.”  
  
“I understand your desire to be able to – How did you do it? Blink your eyes and find yourself outside of your bottle, so to speak,” she says drolly. Dr. Demille thought it was delightfully amusing to compare mutant powers to TV Land shows. “To be quite serious, we were worried. Mr. Macomb in security woke up in just a day, but not Mr. Garrett. Mutants are better able to withstand your mutation. Isn’t that what we discovered when you touched Lora Gibbons?”  
  
“They made me touch her,” is her response. Rogue wishes she’d been fiercer. To her own ears, she sounds like a whining teenager.   
  
“I thought we had concluded that the force or impelling agent you feel when you’re on the brink of taking from another is the result of your own condition, exacerbated by repressed memories of the trauma you suffered,” Dr. Demille says.   
  
“You concluded that. I never wanted to touch that crazy woman. She sees radiation and UV light and thinks it’s angels and demons.” A chair scrapes against the floor. “Can I go now? Clearly the sedative’s wearing off, and I’m sure it’s about time for an even bigger dose.”  
  
Papers rustle. “Well, whatever you’re scheduled for I’ll suggest they double it. And keep the door to your room locked at all times.”  
  
“They already moved me to my own ward,” she complains, though Rogue well remembers how defeated she was. “What if I have to use the bathroom?”  
  
“Changes have to be made. Did you think no one would notice your late night visits to Carol Danvers’ room? The security cameras in every corner actually do record.”  
  
A long minute. “You don’t have to stop me. Please? She’s lonely.”  
  
“You’re lonely, Marie.”  
  
“I told you not to call me that.”  
  
“Mm. The infamous mutant dissociative name phenomenon. I will not address you as ‘The Rogue,’ Marie, however much you protest. It’s demeaning for both of us.”  
  
The clip stops. Rogue wipes her face on the back of her gloves.  
  
“I would have killed the bitch,” Mystique states levelly.  
  
“I didn’t want to know her any better.” Rogue sniffs to clear her sinuses. “What about Carol? Is her file there, too?”  
  
“Yes,” Magneto confirms. “However, I rather thought you would appreciate a firsthand account. A Senator Robert Kelly is currently enjoying my hospitality. Along with my special attention.”   
  
Now that Carol is so much on the forefront of her mind, Rogue can hardly believe she’d barely recognized Kelly on the news just two days ago. This is the man who based his entire political career on the marginalization of mutants. This is the man who’d blatantly used Carol’s story to soften his image after a sex scandal ended in divorce, and then abandoned the issue when a cure didn’t come quick enough.  
  
Oh, yes. A firsthand account is just what Carol wants.  
  
Magneto stands, motioning for her to do the same. “My dear, I would like very much to introduce you to the brave new future you will help us usher in.”  
  
Okay, that’s not something she or Carol likes the sound of.   
  
With one hand resting between her shoulder blades, Magneto leads her through more tunnels.   
  
She tries to pay attention so she knows the way back, but Carol’s memories of Senator Kelly spark into her thoughts at random. Kelly walking into her room at Southaven behind flower arrangements and in front of a camera crew. Kelly introducing himself after she won the Medal of Freedom. Kelly shaking hands with her father. Kelly at a press conference praising her heroism prior to her mutation. Always grinning at her, always putting his arm around her. “Captain Danvers, you are more than admirable,” he would say. “The future of America looks bright because of your selflessness.” Shortly after his last visit, Carol’s memories become hazy, incoherent. Dark.  
  
Rogue almost stumbles, and she realizes with a start that she’s crossing a bridge that Magneto is creating out of scraps of metal even as they walk. The spectacle allows her to refocus. What kind of place is this, anyway? Now the lair looks more like a dam than a cave.  
  
Once across, Magneto waves his hand to bend back the prison bars keeping Kelly locked inside.  
  
“How are we feeling, Senator? Advanced, I hope.”  
  
Confused, Rogue steps into the cell behind Magneto. Only a pair of abandoned leather shoes indicate that Kelly had once been imprisoned here.   
  
Over the sound of waves crashing against rock, Rogue hears a pained, gasping moan.  
  
Jerking his arm back, Magneto rips the barred window out of its mount. Assuming a casual stance, he leans over the side.   
  
The raspy voice of Senator Kelly reaches Rogue’s ears. “What the hell have you done to me?”  
  
Magneto chuckles. “Senator, this is pointless,” he observes, a smile in his voice.   
  
Rogue edges forward, trying to get a look at Kelly over Magneto’s shoulder. She can sort of see him grasping onto the side of the cliff wall, but she can’t work out how he could’ve gotten there.  
  
Continuing, Magneto taunts, “Where would you go? Who would take you in now that you’re one of us?”  
  
Rogue’s eyebrows shoot up. Kelly’s way too old to manifest, according to every PSA she’s ever seen. So then how…  
  
Magneto straightens, turning toward her. “The Senator’s fate is now our fate, just as the fate of every human will soon become our fate. This is the future. However.” Magneto steps aside to give her clear access to the gaping hole in the rock face. “For past transgressions, his life is in your hands.”  
  
Hesitantly, Rogue takes Magneto’s former position. Kelly’s sweat-slicken face is tilted toward her, blind terror in his eyes. Hundreds of feet below him, waves beat against the shore. She reaches down to grasp his wrist carefully. Her glove does a little to absorb the wetness of his skin but he still almost slips, his wrist stretching bonelessly. Before he plummets, she reaches out with her other hand and drags him through the window by his collar.   
  
He lands on the floor with a sickening squish. The effort to get to his knees proves insurmountable, and he flops down at her feet. She waits for Carol’s righteous anger to sweep away the pity Rogue feels for him.  
  
Motioning cordially, like he’s hosting a campaign fundraiser, Magneto says, “Senator Kelly, I would like you to meet Rogue. Rogue is a former beneficiary of the excellent patient care you yourself pushed to the top of the agenda at Southaven Mutant Treatment Clinic. Rogue, meet the Senator. I’m not mistaken in believing you have a mutual friend.” Smile gone mocking, he clarifies, “Captain Carol Danvers.”  
  
Kelly turns his cheek to the side to look up at her through his arms. His eyes, drawn at first in wary confusion, search her face. When recognition hits, his stare falls accusingly on her gloves. “You’re the mutant who killed her.”  
  
Rogue flinches, but her body leans forward. “How dare you, of all people? You’re ignorant,” she replies, her accent lilting high.  
  
Carol lets go hastily.  _Forgive me_.  
  
“Come now, there’s no cause to be melodramatic,” Magneto intervenes. “No one is ignorant in this room, unless deliberately so. Senator, you have seen the security tape just as well as I. We can agree on ‘euthanasia’ rather than murder, can we not?”  
  
A generous relabeling. Carol’s hand may have reached out to touch, but it was Rogue’s monster who tasted her weak will to live and drank her in completely.   
  
Rogue falls hard on her knees, bringing her palms down smack on the floor. “What did you do to her?”  
  
Kelly acts like he didn’t hear. His focus is on the hairline cracks in the rock forming around her spread fingers. She presses down harder, her hands sinking like they would in wet cement.   
  
He raises his rubbery face. “I-I didn’t do anything.”  
  
Rogue feels her left elbow being lifted. She jerks her attention to Magneto, who stands above her. “You won’t get the vindication you seek that way, my dear child.” He pinches the seam over her middle finger, drawing her glove off. The skin of her hand is tingling. Reaching out. Magneto maneuvers her arm closer to Kelly, then steps away.  
  
So obvious, he’s manipulating her. He wants her to touch Kelly; maybe that was the plan from the start. Maybe he needs to know something – But why not just get a telepath, then, or any other of the innumerable mutations that would meet the same end? And why tell her he has Carol’s file? She knows she can get the hard facts another way.  
  
Only, she wants more than facts.  
  
“No – no!” Kelly recoils from Rogue’s bare hand.  
  
It’s been a long time since she was an object of abject horror. She doesn’t like it, Carol doesn’t like it. Logan hates it.  
  
Rogue twists around, lunging for Magneto, hoping to knock him down. The chain of Carol’s dog tag stops her short. The garrote wrenches her back onto Kelly’s body, which absorbs her impact like a waterbed. Rocked by buoyancy and impelled by Magneto, the side of her face makes awkward but solid contact with the wet, salty skin on the back of Kelly’s neck.   
  
She pushes against his body, the pull of her mutation, and waves of nausea. Breaking away, she skitters onto her hands and knees. Her forehead bounces and ripples with the contact against the ground. Fluids leak out through her pores to puddle around her body.  
  
 _Oh, God. Oh, God. No, please_  –   
  
Magneto’s hand hovers near her shoulder. “Don’t fight it.”  
  
The light. She can feel the way it seeped into Robert’s bones. The whisper, Magneto’s damning whisper – “Welcome to the future, brother.” He’s been poisoned. He needs a hospital –  _They’ll know. They’ll all know what I am. Oh, God. Mark._  Mark, who stood by him through the divorce, only because he believes in the cause and the threat – He won’t understand. His own son will disown him. Mark. The only person in the world who loves him.  _I’m infected. Oh, God._  
  
With all of Robert’s terror, fear, and prejudice surging through her, she glares at Magneto. He stands, shaking his head in disappointment. “I had hoped you would be a believer.”  
  
Clear vomit trickles out of Rogue’s mouth. Fury turns to incredulity. “Believe in what? You made – ” Suddenly, she has to laugh. It’s too ironic and too hopeless not to. “You made us into a d-disease!” Like AIDS. John would get such a kick out of this. “You made them right!”  
  
“You lack perspective.”  
  
That’s funny, too, because she has nothing but perspective – multiple, conflicting, arguing perspectives. Some in the dark, some in the spotlight. But, oddly enough, the sum of all they have to live for doesn’t add up to a whole hell of a lot. Especially not for Robert, who’s drawn himself into the fetal position. She’s mildly shocked that he’s still conscious.  
  
Rogue sits back, her legs twisted abnormally under her. She’s almost sobbing now, because she made the wrong choice. If she dies here, no one will find her. The Professor will wish she trusted him. Logan will blame himself.   
  
But maybe she won’t die. Magneto is still trying to evangelize her: “Look into the distinguished Senator’s thoughts, Rogue, and tell me he would not have exterminated us.”  
  
The fine print of Project Wideawake.  _It may come to that. It’s a war._  Does Magneto want to subvert it? Or does he just want to win?  
  
Rogue find she doesn’t care one way or the other. Disgusted by his hypocrisy and his gentility, she draws her lip into a snarl worthy of Logan. “Go fuck the horse you rode in on.”  
  
The syringe hanging on Magneto’s belt lifts and sinks into her neck. Grasping it between her fingers, Rogue tips forward.  
  
“Young people,” she hears, before seeing dark.


	2. Ask the dead man walking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A flash of anger plants a “No Trespassing” sign on his thoughts.  
> “I asked you once; it wasn’t an invitation to move in.”  
> – Logan –

Icy water trickles down into the collar of his shirt, washing away some of the cold sweat he’d broken out in before he’d been knocked the fuck out of commission. Again. That’s twice – three times, if he counts last night – that he’s been laid flat right when Marie needed him most. And not five damn minutes after he swore – he fucking swore – to take care of her.   
  
Right. With a body full of metal, he’d been a puppet on strings as far as Magneto was concerned.   
  
Logan splashes more water on his face. The residual tremors that dizzied his brain and shook his joints ever since he’d snapped awake in the train station, half-hovering next to Jean, half-dragged by Cyclops, are mostly gone. Phantom vibrations persist, like he’s wearing his whole skeleton wrong.  
  
Another splash and he lifts his head, meeting his own eyes in the mirror for half a second of fierce accusation – that’s right, bastard, you let your girl bargain away her freedom for your worthless hide – before flicking his attention to the reflection of Xavier and Storm standing outside the bathroom.   
  
He swipes the back of his neck with a towel, which he throws into the sink. He turns away, pushing down his shirt sleeves and pulling on his denim jacket.  
  
Too pissed off to keep the blame all to himself, Logan directs his glare at Xavier. “You said he wanted me.”  
  
“I made a terrible mistake,” he replies, leaning forward in his chair. “His helmet is somehow designed to block my telepathy. I couldn’t see what he was after until it was too late.”  
  
No, not too late. Nowhere close to too late. It would be too late if he was holding onto Marie’s lifeless body, and even that wouldn’t be the end of it. There would be a world of pain to inflict.   
  
But these people don’t think like he does. If they did, they’d have already mounted a response. All that talk about electromagnetic fields interfering with Cerebro and masking Magneto’s position is no excuse for sitting on their asses to wait it out. If Magneto’s two steps ahead like Jean said he always is, Logan will just have to go cut him off at the knees.  
  
Without a word, he sweeps by Storm, who uncrosses her arms in surprise. “Where are you going?”  
  
Logan pauses in the doorway long enough to slip on his coat. “I’m gonna find her.”  
  
“How?” Storm asks.  
  
“The traditional way – look.”  
  
Annoyingly enough, she follows him down the stairs. It’s nothing he wouldn’t expect. She already tried to talk him out of going after Marie once tonight. A real team player.  
  
“Logan, you can’t do this alone.”   
  
“Who’s gonna help me? You? So far you’ve all done a bang-up job.”   
  
Storm herself had been barely conscious as they’d left the wreckage of the train station, tails tucked firmly between their legs and unnoticed by any of the dazed-looking police.  
  
“Then help us. Fight with us.”  
  
Jerking around, he sneers, “Fight with you? What, join the team? Be an ‘X-Man’? Who the hell do you think you are? You’re a mutant. The whole world out there is full of people who hate and fear you, and you’re wasting your time tryin’ to protect them? I got better things to do.”   
  
Logan turns, but he can’t leave it at that. These people are delusional. No one gets to be a hero, not in the real world. He may not remember how, but he’s sure as shit learned that lesson.   
  
“You know, Magneto’s right. There’s a war coming. You sure you’re on the right side?”  
  
“At least I’ve chosen a side.” Her sanctimony is enough to make him grit his teeth and start walking.   
  
Storm can go ahead and enjoy her pretty little notions of what it means to be on the frontlines, fine. Best he can do is hope she dies with them. As for Logan, he’s picked this battle for one reason and one reason only, and it’s personal. Beyond that, Magneto can have his war and Xavier can have his dream. Not his problem.   
  
Logan opens the front door and slams shut it behind him.  
  
He smells Jean in the garage before he sees her standing next to the open passenger side of a Porsche four-door. She’s outfitted like she’s prepped to take a jog, navy jacket zipped up to the X-insignia on her left breast. Her scent is…Something’s off there, but it could be the gasoline and the oil.   
  
Spotting Cyclops’s Harley to the left, he starts toward it. “Sorry, Red. I’ll take you out some other night.”  
  
“Logan, be serious.”  
  
Over his shoulder, he fixes her with an impatient scowl.   
  
Jean presses her long fingers together. “Charles never had any intention of sitting back and waiting. The UN Summit is tomorrow night. We all want Rogue safe, but we need information.”  
  
“I’ll get it easier alone.” Spheres of influence, she said before, which means there’ll be people in the city who know where Magneto likes to hide.  
  
“Telepathy is easy. Intimidation at claw-point is self-gratifying.”  
  
Logan swings his leg over the side of the bike and grips the key left in the ignition. That was a cheap shot, but it doesn’t make it any less true. “Shouldn’t you be tending the scout leader?”  
  
“Scott’s resting. You’re the one who needs my help. Instead of squandering precious time, let me lead you directly to a known source. Vanisher. He’s an hour away, in lockup at Hiram prison. He’s our best chance of finding out where Rogue is or, at the very least, what Magneto intends to do with her. You’re not doing her any favors going off on your own.”   
  
Goddamn it all to fucking hell.  
  
He eyes Jean for a minute before getting off the bike. The woman knows how to make a point, he’ll give her that.   
  
“I assume you want to drive.” She tosses the key to him.  
  
What a diplomat.  
  
Coming around the side of the car, Logan gripes, “So, you want me to break you into prison. How does Daddy Warbucks feel about one of his orphans turning criminal?”  
  
“Charles knows what’s at stake. And, with any luck, no one will even know we were there.”  
  
Logan snorts, his hand on the driver’s side door. “Yeah? What do you expect to do, Jeanie? Waltz right on through the front door?”  
  
A grinning head pops right on through the car’s hardtop. “Good plan,” Kitty mewls. “Gee, Dr. Grey. Don’t you wish you’d thought of it first?”  
  
This better be somebody’s idea of an elaborate setup for a well-worn punch line.  
  
Jean doesn’t look like she’s joking. “Kitty is our way in.”  
  
“I thought I was the way in.” Slice and dice, quiet if he can. Risky but manageable.  
  
“No, you’re the worst case scenario.” Jean slips into the passenger seat. “We should go.”  
  
“Little girl stays here,” he says to Jean before raising his hard look to Kitty.  
  
Torso all the way out of the car, she’s leaning her elbows against the roof and rolling her eyes. “The ‘little girl’ is six months older than Rogue.”  
  
Inwardly, Logan cringes. This one looks twelve.  
  
“Kitty is eighteen,” Jean clarifies, sounding a little sheepish to be hiding behind that thin moral line.   
  
“That’s right, totally legal adult here with an amazing gift and a future locker with her name on it in the not-so-secret lower levels.”  
  
He was a little off, earlier. Xavier doesn’t have it in him to brainwash kids into soldiers, true, but evangelizing them into X-Men isn’t as different as the old man probably likes to think.  
  
“Besides all that,” Kitty huffs, “Rogue is my potential future BFF, so I’m going to do everything in my mutant power to help her.” Emphatically, she adds, “Gender and age discrimination not withstanding.” She slips through the roof and into her seat.  
  
What on this godforsaken earth had Logan done to deserve the utter aggravation of this moment? He’d felt so vindicated storming out like he had, singular purpose in mind. One conversation later, he’s at the beck and call of a know-it-all kid and a wannabe politician.   
  
A short blast of the car’s horn has him shoving himself behind the wheel of the Porsche as Kitty sits back. If he closed the door any harder it would have bounced off its hinges.   
  
When he turns the key, the panel in the center lights up.   
  
“GPS,” Jean says. “Find Hiram prison.”  
  
Had the thing replied, Logan might have put his fist through it. Lucky for his temper it draws a red line on a map and leaves it at that. Jean angles it toward him.  
  
Logan glances at the girl messing with earphones in the rearview mirror. Most people aren’t cut out for dangerous possibilities. Kitty is definitely most people. “Seatbelt,” he grunts, putting the Porsche into gear and starting out of the garage.  
  
Kitty keeps her eyes on the glowing device in her hands. “I totally dug the  _Annie_  reference – Professor X is both loaded and bald, and Dr. Grey has red hair – nice one, I’m with you. But, seriously, you expect me to believe you give a hoot about the rules of the road? You’re not buckling up.”  
  
No one’s ever accused him of practicing what he preached. “Suit yourself,” he replies, digging out another cigar from his coat pocket. “But if you go flyin’ through the windshield, try not to break the glass before you break your neck.”  
  
Letting out a tinkering laugh, she buckles herself in. “Well, fine, if you’re that down on your own driving…”  
  
Cigar between his teeth, Logan lights the tip. Kitty, head bopping along, looks out at the scenery. Jean looks at Logan.  
  
“Could you roll down your window if you’re going to smoke, please? I have allergies.”  
  
About ready to tell her to hold her breath, Jean’s smile shuts his mouth. He hits the button and throws the whole cigar out on the pavement. Her perfectly sized, blindingly white teeth glimmer even brighter in the moonlight.  
  
The things men do for women. Enough to make him sick.  
  
Silence falls heavily around his shoulders. Jean’s making no secret of the fact that she wants to say something, but she’s evidently waiting for permission. She wants to talk about Marie, no doubt, so she can keep on waiting.   
  
Wouldn’t take a psychic to know that he’s anxious, but he’s not about to explain what’s really unseating his stomach – the probability that Marie’s reckless choice of answers to her past over Xavier’s rescue attempt had something to do with the part of Logan she can feel inside her head.   
  
What’s he doing up there, anyway? Logan sees a version of himself snarling, pacing behind locked bars. Putting Marie on edge, making her lash out, telling her to run. What’s he showing her? Everything? Shit he can’t remember, either because it’s lost or it’s blended together into the usual pattern he falls into when the effort to act civilized isn’t worth the company: fight, fuck, flee. Might be wrong, but he does it well. Not that he’s proud of himself. He’s…Does she know what? Does she know more? Stripped of all pretenses, all semblances – The beast in the cage, is he in her head now, too?  
  
Under his tight grip, the wheel guides his hands steadily to the right. “You can stop that.” He’d been hugging the line, but he wasn’t about to drift into the next lane.   
  
“Something of a reflex,” Jean explains. “You’re…busy.”  
  
A flash of anger plants a “No Trespassing” sign on his thoughts. “I asked you once; it wasn’t an invitation to move in.”  
  
“I know, and I apologize. I can’t quite help it at the moment.”  
  
He glances over at her. Her head is tilted against the back of the seat, exposing the long line of her throat. She takes in measured breaths. That odd scent lingers.  
  
“I don’t read minds on purpose or very often. I really shouldn’t be starting with yours.” The corner of her mouth ticks. “That’s Charles’ opinion on the matter.”   
  
When she meets his eyes, he sees that her irises have all but disappeared.  
  
Logan reaches over to close his hand over hers, trapping her fingers. Her heart rate, already thumping like a jackrabbit’s, jumps. He turns her arm over, cocking an eyebrow at the butterfly bandage on the inside of her elbow. The scent is stronger. Iodine and another chemical.   
  
“What’s his opinion on that?” Logan wants to know, letting go and pointing his eyes back on the road.  
  
“It’s nothing. It’s a low-level stimulant that acts as an enhancer to mutant powers. Hank and I are developing the prototype.”  
  
“And he’s using you as a guinea pig. Sounds real smart.”  
  
“We’re both testing the formula. I’ll grant you it’s not ideal scientifically, but it’s the ethical way to do it. Most scientists who seriously study this sort of thing agree that mutations must go beyond the X-gene. In science-fiction they like to say that ninety percent of the human brain is uncharted ability, but, frankly, that’s nonsense. In fact…”  
  
She’s sliding into doctor mode again, but the consummate professional routine wouldn’t fool anyone with eyes. There’s a nails-down-his-back kind of woman in there, begging to be let out. He can spot the type at thirty paces, get them into compromising positions in under thirty minutes. Once in a while, he’ll meet a woman who’ll fake hard-to-get but the charade never quite does it for him. The good doctor and her cool demeanor, well, he decides that’s genuine. He likes it as a novelty.   
  
Even if – glancing at the little girl in the backseat, he hates himself for the qualifier – it lacks the flushed charge of single-minded pursuit. Of looking up from a hammer and nail to find that he’s got the full attention of dewy brown eyes close-set on a face that never quite settles on bashful or brash, too young or old enough. He’s been an object of lust-fueled spectacle far back as he can remember, but that mixture of curiosity and hope and gratitude is something else. Glass-spun sugar again, because he knew even then that eventually he’d handle her too rough and lose the only sweet thing that had ever wanted a part in his life.  
  
Logan takes a sharp corner, his eyes darting to Jean to make sure she’s still caught up in her dissertation.  
  
“…And that’s why we think that mutation affects the brain itself. Moira is studying brainwaves – action potentials traveling in reverse directions, that sort of thing – but Hank thinks it’s more primal than that. The amygdala,” Jean says, like she’s tasting the word. “Of course, his critics say that would mean that mutations are some kind of autism, which is a little premature since there’s yet to be an established link between autism and the amygdala…”  
  
Logan tries to stop tuning her out. The fact that she thinks he’s the type of guy who’d actually pay attention to any of this genetic biology shit rather than on who he’d prefer underneath him and why is offering a hell of a lot more credit than he deserves. He wants to earn it.  
  
When Jean finally winds herself down, Logan takes all the technical jargon and condenses into one succinct explanation: “Steroids.”  
  
“Control,” she counters. “If the amygdala is really the key, then strengthening it might lead to an end of unconscious or reflexive use of power.”  
  
“So it’s personal.”  
  
Jean places a hand over her thighs and tiny specks of lint lift away from her tight pants. “I think a lot of women have romantic notions of what it means to look into the eyes of the men they love. But it wouldn’t just be for Scott,” she’s quick to clarify. “I’m sure Rogue, for instance, would be grateful for the possibility.”  
  
First in line. Anything to keep her so-called monster from winning.   
  
Logan considers the road ahead. “She wanted to come back. She wanted help.”   
  
“Charles believes in second chances. And third and fourth chances. When we find Rogue, she’s more than welcome to return.”  
  
“You’ll help her,” he says, meaning Jean specifically. Meaning extra attention, special care.  
  
Jean waits until he meets her gaze, then she nods. “I can do that.”  
  
It isn’t so much a load off his shoulders as it is a part of the deal. Nothing he alone can do for Marie is enough to satisfy his promise. So he’ll make it his job to see to it that she has the best of everything, even if that means sharing the task.   
  
“I made a lot of excuses earlier,” Jean says carefully. “But you were right. We should have done more about Southaven. We could have saved her a lot of pain, and we wouldn’t be in this position now.”  
  
“We’ll get her back.” When in doubt, Logan always chooses certainty.   
  
The GPS shows an underpass half a mile from the edge of the triangular prison. Headlights off, Logan pulls in and parks alongside a turned-over dumpster.   
  
Kitty uncurls herself from her position against the window and stretches hugely. “We’re here already? Coolio.”  
  
Ten minutes from breaking into a maximum security complex specifically designed to house mutants and she’s yawning like they’re about to visit grandma in the nursing home. Great.   
  
The hike through the woods to the edge of the outermost fence is an easy one, though Logan could stand for thicker coverage and a darker night. Approaching the twenty-foot barbed wire, he can feel the electric current surging through the metal. Spotlights mounted on towers swirl across the grounds in irregular patterns, and he can smell a platoon’s worth of guards trolling around inside.   
  
“She gonna make us invisible while she’s at it?” he asks Jean pointedly.  
  
“The reason security looks so tight is because mutants have successfully broken in from the outside,” Jean replies. “They’re keeping it out of the media, but it’s enough of a concern that the government is considering turning over the prison to military control.”  
  
“Sounds like the beginning of a nice little police state.”  
  
“An alternative is to hire and train mutant guards. Naturally out of the question.”  
  
“Right?” Kitty sticks a hand directly through the fence to test it. “Heaven forbid anyone encourage us to use our gifts in productive ways that actually, you know, benefit society as a whole.”  
  
Logan rolls his shoulders to loosen up. “We stand around here any longer, they’ll be laying down the red carpet and leading us in at gun point.”  
  
“Then let’s get ready to make a run for it.” Kitty shrugs, taking a hold of Jean’s hand and waggling her fingers at Logan.   
  
He grimaces, making no move to take her hand. This is the best they can come up with? Fuck’s sake.  
  
Drawing a breath, Jean stretches out her free arm. A hundred meters away, the lights on top of the far towers blow their fuses.   
  
Counting the steroids, hard to tell if that’s supposed to be impressive.  
  
Sirens kick up, making Logan grit his teeth. Black outlines steadily converge on the other side of the complex.   
  
Blinking, Jean says, “Anything out of the ordinary, and the guards have to immediately respond as if there’s a mutant attack. But the lockdown system is so intricate and there are so many false alarms a day, they’ve gotten careless.” Off his eyebrow, she admits, “Once it became clear that the FBI wasn’t going to let any of our allies talk to Vanisher, we started developing strategies to see him ourselves.”  
  
These people are up to their asses in quicksand, surrounded by enemies on all sides.  
  
“Coast is clear!” Kitty stage whispers, launching herself through the fence and dragging Jean along. Logan catches Jean’s wrist at the last possible second and pushes through with her.  
  
Jogging, he fixes his grip and takes the lead as they go through the second layer of fencing. He tugs Jean closer behind him, forcing Kitty to redouble her efforts. Logan points a set of claws straight ahead. If there are guards on the other side of the wall they’re running straight into, Logan’s not about to give them time to get over the surprise.   
  
The bunk beds he passes through tell him this is a cell. One man who might as well be three is the only person inside, his girth perched on a tiny toilet seat.   
  
“Don’t mind us,” Logan says over the alarm, retracting his claws and elbowing him in the face. The sumo wrestler goes skeletal in the blink of an eye. He slumps back against the wall.  
  
“Ew,” Kitty puts in breathlessly. She faces the other direction, fingers clamped tightly on her nose.   
  
“That wasn’t strictly called for,” Jean says, shooting the diet guru an empathetic look.  
  
Guy’s a convict about to take a dump. Plenty called for. No time to make a point out of it – the alarm cuts off, flashing lights with it.  
  
“Now what?” Logan demands.  
  
Jean pulls up her cuff to check her watch. “We have less than five minutes before the sweep makes it back to this side of the prison. The highest-level prisoners are kept underground, and the most valuable right in the center. Vanisher has two guards stationed outside his door at all times. The alarm system automatically seals the cell from any outside entry until the all-clear is issued.”  
  
So they’ll drop down through the ceiling. It’s a lot to admit, but the girl’s plenty useful. He motions at her to get a move on.  
  
Kitty groans slightly as she complies. “Can we not sprint this time? Short legs!” she hisses.  
  
“You don’t wanna run, hope the guards really do have their heads up their asses,” he tells her.  
  
Dipping her shoulders in and out of the bars, she reports, “Coast looks clear. Let’s take it stealth-like, okey doke? I did put on dark clothes for a reason,” she says, tugging on her long-sleeved shirt. The front has silver glitter kittens glued on, with “Meow,” written in script all over it. “I work best in shadow.” She gives him half-ironic jazz fingers. “Shadowcat.”  
  
“Yeah,” he intones. “You’re a regular black op.”  
  
Logan grabs her by they elbow before she can even think to salute him sarcastically – it’s what Marie would’ve done, were she part of this little adventure – and impels Jean through the bars with one hand partly on her back but mostly on her ass.   
  
Catcalls start up the moment they pass by the first cell – “Ooh, I like a redhead”; “You into sharin’, big guy?”; “Baby child, come over here. I’ll split ya in half.” That last one earns the piece of shit a flash of claws and telekinetic bitch slap from Jean.   
  
The block erupts in laughter.   
  
“Easy now, easy now,” lean, tough-looking guy a few cells ahead says. “You lookin’ for some particular mutant or you come to gawk at all the freaks in cages? There ain’t a lot of us in here – hell, there ain’t a lot of us anywhere – but tickets still ain’t free.”  
  
Guy sounds like he’s got some authority, so Logan side-arms the rest of his cigars at him as they clip past.  
  
“Go on ’bout your business,” he replies, and the other mutants grumble themselves into silence.  
  
Jean motions for them to stop at the end of the row, where a thick, steel door contains the cellblock. She pats her pockets carefully, choosing the right to unzip. She produces a smoke bomb and points the long wick toward him. “I don’t know what happened to the lighter I had.”  
  
He smirks a little as he takes out a book of matches. “Kid nicked it.” He’s striking the match when he realizes that “kid” means nothing to Jean. Unlike him, she’s got a lot more than one to look out for. “Rogue.”  
  
“Well, we’ll just have to go over the rules with her as soon as she’s back at school.” Jean carefully hands the burning stick to Kitty, who takes it like it has two heads.  
  
Logan snorts at the idea of anyone telling Marie what to do, especially now that she’s got him in her head. “Lots of luck.” To Kitty he says, “You got about three seconds. Three, two – ”  
  
“Gah!” Eyes closed, Kitty cocks her elbow awkwardly and chucks the smoke bomb, her arm sailing through the metal. Apparently knowing she’s the dictionary definition of “throws like a girl,” she turns bright pink. “I watch baseball. I don’t so much play.”  
  
The alarm starts his assault on his ears again, accompanied by the sound of gunfire behind the seal.   
  
Firmly taking a hold of Kitty’s shoulder, Logan thrusts his head toward the wall. The dent his forehead leaves against the steel seems to wobble when he stumbles a step back. Fucking hell.  
  
“Um, hello! Ask me first!” Kitty hisses, grabbing on to his arm.  
  
Before he can shrug her off, Jean’s weakly grabbed a hold of his other one. Her eyes are closed, her expression strained.  
  
From behind the barrier, metal drops heavily on the ground to a chorus of surprised grunts and protests. So that’s what Jean meant when she said the guards would never know they were there. She’s pinning it on Magneto.  
  
“Now?” Kitty asks.  
  
At Jean’s nod, they take off. Through the steel, through the smoke. He can’t see anything beyond the gray and the sting, but he follows the sound of heavy boots treading remarkably lightly on the stairs to the northeast and west. The precision is nothing like the fumbling of the guards outside.  
  
Reeks of military.  
  
Lip drawn into a snarl, Logan almost has his fist clenched tight enough to pop claw when the floor drops out from under him. His stomach mid-flip, his left foot catches the top of a table full of medical supplies. The impact sends both it and him crashing to the floor with excessively loud clangs.  
  
His nose is pressed to concrete when Jean’s toes touch down feather light beside his face. She hastens over to the jimmy-rigged hospital bed as Logan rolls over on his back. Laces dangle from a pair of size six sneakers the way Kitty dangles from the ceiling.   
  
She looks down her pert nose at him, wincing. “Uh…Oops?”  
  
Logan gets to his feet with a grunt. “Get down from there before you start lookin’ even more like a piñata.”   
  
“Are you going to catch me?”  
  
The crackle of a communicator and the clicking sound of technology biting them in the ass sets off Logan’s claws.  
  
“I said I was sorry, jee – Ah!” Kitty drops, yowling.  
  
Logan breaks her fall on his back, steadying her with one hand, claws of the other trained on the thick, metal door. “We got gate crashers, Jeanie.”  
  
“Dr. Grey, my fingers – ” Kitty is tense and gasping. No scent of blood, at least.  
  
He shakes her a little so she doesn’t pass out on him, looking back to see Jean with her head down, all her concentration on the mind she has cradled between her palms.   
  
“Jean. Door. Soldiers. Worse case scenario. How much time you need me to buy? Jean!”  
  
“Quiet!”  
  
The panel on the side of the door erupts into sparks, crashing the alarm into dead silence. Movement on the other side of the door pauses. Kitty sucks in her whimpers.  
  
Jean’s unsteady breathing is the loudest noise in the whole damn prison. She blinks rapidly. Steadies herself. “I need to concentrate. Five minutes. Watch the door and take care of Kitty.” She closes her eyes and makes a face like she’s jumping off a hundred-foot diving board into a glass of water.  
  
Footsteps back away. A small explosion, and debris flies. The door holds tight against it. The rest of the prison might be an exercise in futility, but it certainly looks like the man in charge has spared no expense on this room.  
  
Still listening intently to the soldiers outside, Logan eases Kitty onto the floor. She pulls up her knees to cradle her face but sticks out her hand dutifully. Ah, Christ – he holds her wrist in his palm, eyeing the splintered bones tenting the skin of her middle and ring fingers. The clearness of the tread-marked bruise points to an intentional asshole show of force rather than an accidental stomping.   
  
Logan looks around the scattered medical supplies for a splint or something, but, what the hell, it’s not like he knows anything about the fixing side of broken bones. He pats Kitty’s wrist a couple times. In place of, “There, there,” he says, “You should’ve pulled the fucker down with me. I’d have shoved his leg bone out through his boot for you.”  
  
Kitty lifts her revolted face. So not all teenagers take comfort in violent, black humor. That would’ve at least gotten a snort out of Marie. But Kitty just chokes once more on a hiccup-sob, big, fat tears dripping from her chin.   
  
He doesn’t blame her any more than he can help her. It’s that last part he can’t stand. “You make an awful lot of noise for a mouse,” Logan grouses.  
  
For half a second, she looks hurt. Then her mouth pinches. She takes a deep breath and rises to the occasion, “Phys-physiognomy is, seriously, a completely debunked pseudo-science. And not at all politically correct, given that mutations often take on a, like, physical manifestation. Take yourself for a perfect case in point. Your hair actually tufts. If you were stockier, that plus the claws would – ”  
  
The god-awful screeching sound of metal on metal makes Kitty and Logan cringe. He helps her to her feet so they can stand by Jean, who’s jolted out of her trance.   
  
“He tell you where Marie is?”  
  
“Telford is barely in there,” Jean tells him gravely, face ticking. “Magneto signed his death warrant and the prison doctors buried him alive. I can’t help him. We have to get him back to Charles.”  
  
“This was supposed to be an interrogation, not a damn rescue mission.”   
  
Deftly, Jean unplugs Vanisher from the machines strapping him to the bed. “It was always a rescue mission. I just thought he’d be conscious. Take this. I want to analyze it later.” She hands off a bag of clear fluid dangling a detached IV. “Kitty, how’re you doing sweetheart?”  
  
“Fine. I’m earning that locker, Dr. Grey.”  
  
“Yes you are.”  
  
The screeching noise stops abruptly. Five thin blades of uneven length saw through the door’s seal. Five more start slicing through the bottom. Logan shoves the IV bag into his inside jacket pocket and lets go of Kitty, intending to confront whatever the hell is on the other side of that door direct.  
  
“Logan, no. We’re leaving. Take him, please.”  
  
The military setup of the prison and Vanisher’s doctors makes Logan want to stay and figure this shit out.   
  
“I could see what Magneto’s base looks like, but the Professor will be able to get Telford to remember where it is.”  
  
Jean wouldn’t be much of a mind reader if she didn’t always know the right thing to say.  
  
Vanisher is nothing but skin and bones. Logan lifts him easily. Kitty presses against him and clutches Vanisher’s arm with her good hand. Jean places her palms flush against his ears.  
  
“You sure about this?”  
  
She smiles grimly. “No. He’s a long-distance teleport. There’s a good chance we could end up on a beach Fiji, because that’s where I’d really rather be right now.”  
  
“Get me Rogue back, and I’ll take you bikini shoppin’.”  
  
Jean closes her eyes. Vanisher opens his.   
  
Logan’s stomach is yanked over his nose, and then he’s kneeling in the dimly lit foyer of the mansion. Kitty is shuddering beside him, while Jean is sprawled out on the wooden floor. She’s breathing like a horse after a race, mouth open wide. The band-aid over her vein reminds him that the power boost worked after all.  
  
“Dr. Grey!” Kitty yelps. She sits back on her heels, crying out, “Professor! Ms. Munroe! Mr. Summers!”  
  
An alarmed horde of kids scurry out from the TV lounge, talking over each other. All-American wraps his arm around Kitty and asks about Marie.   
  
Logan, remembering what she said about “a nice boy” telling her to hit the road, glares blades at him as he stands. “Where the hell is Xavier?”  
  
A big guy steps forward looking like Joe Montana in a sea of flag footballers. “They’re all down in medical.”  
  
“Rumor is there’s something really wrong with the Professor,” the gum-snapper elaborates.   
  
Pyro says from the side, “Hey Wolverine, shouldn’t that mutant terrorist you’re holding like your girl be in lock up at Hiram?”  
  
Ignoring him, Logan thrusts Vanisher up toward the big guy. “Take him.” He picks Jean up and heads toward the elevator. “Follow me. Mouse, ditch the boyfriend.”  
  
“She’s about to pass out!”   
  
Logan gets in the elevator. “Hurry up,” he relents.  
  
The six of them make a ridiculous picture when they come into the med lab, breaking Cyclops and Storm’s silent vigil over the prone, unconscious Professor.   
  
“What’s all this?” the image of Dr. MacTaggart asks from a computer. Dr. McCoy shares the split-screen with her.  
  
Letting go of Storm, Cyclops rushes over to snatch his one and only away from Logan. He mummers her name, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Why do you do this to yourself?” Her eyes start to flutter.   
  
Logan starts forward to help get her on the other table. “I think she’s – ”  
  
Cyclops stops him cold. “No one gives a damn what you think.”  
  
Crossing his empty arms over his chest, Logan scowls at the room at large while the others set up help for Jean, Vanisher, and Kitty under McCoy and MacTaggart’s instructions. It’s all thirty milligrams IV push of that or fifty of this, vital signs are weak or breathing is normal. Storm hands Kitty a few pain killers and a glass of water, and Bobby holds her hand as the drugs work through her system.  
  
“Peter, how is Mr. Porter’s heart rate now?” McCoy wants to know.  
  
Big guy looks at the monitor uncertainly. “Uh…no change. Or maybe slower?”   
  
Jean groggily struggles to get Cyclops to let her sit up. “Scott, I need to try reading his mind again.”  
  
“No way. You pumped three times the maximum dosage of that drug into yourself, now you’re crashing. Take it easy or you’ll wind up with an aneurysm. Hank, tell her.”  
  
“I’m afraid he’s right, Jean. Not to mention…As you see, Mr. Porter is barely holding onto his life. Another invasion of his mind will surely kill him. We will make do with what you have already learned.”  
  
“I don’t know – My head…”  
  
“This is a disaster,” Cyclops pronounces lowly, wringing Jean’s hand. “You and Kitty hurt, Charles in a coma, Cerebro sabotaged, our only lead near dead – We agreed before that Hiram Prison wasn’t an option. We voted.”  
  
“Scott, all of this is bigger and more important than your principles.”  
  
“You slipped me a sedative . Damn it, what can’t you justify?”  
  
“Charles never should have let you go behind our backs,” Storm agrees, laying a gentle hand on the Professor’s bald head. “Endangering a student, of all things…”  
  
“All right, Oro,” Jean says in a tone of wounded friendship. “Two against one, I’m wrong again. I apologize.”  
  
“That isn’t the point.” Cyclops finally helps Jean sit up and buries his face in her neck. “God, you make me so crazy sometimes.”   
  
The tender relief on Jean’s face makes her more beautiful than Logan’s ever seen her.  
  
He opens his mouth with an audible jaw crack. “Enough with this bullshit. Jesus Christ. So what, Xavier sent Jean out to get her hands dirty and you all got your panties in a bunch because she came home to a mess. Stop flinging shit at each other, and start focusing. Magneto has Rogue. Why?”  
  
Everyone stares at him like he caught them with their fingers stuck up their assholes.   
  
Then Jean says, “Telford Porter wasn’t born a mutant. Magneto has built a machine,” and they begin to piece it all together.


	3. There's no giving up the ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Fear doesn’t make wrong into right.   
> How you stop yourself from falling matters.”  
> – Rogue –

Rogue isn’t falling, she’s sinking. No air down there, her brain yells. Push up, push up. Something hard hits against her. She tries to flail. She twitches. She screams, but nothing comes out. The fog only gets thicker.   
  
A heavier something drops on her spine, causing her upper body to jerk and lift. Rogue uses the momentum to roll herself onto her side. Her sputtering coughs turn into deep hacking. To steady herself, she puts her hand on the uneven rock. Water from the puddle she almost drown in splashes over her wrist.  
  
With the sleeve of her cloak, she wipes her face. In the dim artificial light, she can see that Senator Kelly is semi-propped up against the now-sealed wall. In his hand is a palm-sized piece of debris. She glares at it, and he lets it fall to the ground.  
  
Gasping faintly, Kelly explains, “Y-you weren’t waking up.”  
  
She notes the fact that he saved her life cynically, knowing it’s meant to be reviewed later. Undoubtedly, he will ask her to return the favor. For now, she tries to find a comfortable way to sit without toppling backward. Whatever was in that syringe is still in her system.   
  
“Are you hungry? There’s food by the door. It’s lunchtime.” He cradles his watch. “Twelve on the dot. That zoo animal comes about every hour and a half to check on us.” He holds his watch’s gold face toward her, even though she’s too far away to read it. “Waterproof.” His laugh is sharp.   
  
“It was a gift from your son,” Rogue remarks. It comes out mild, though she meant it to be nasty. She meant to remind him of what he was then and what is now.   
  
He touches the engraved band. “Yes, from Mark. You’re right.”   
  
“I know everything about you, Robert. Your darkest secrets are all up here with me.” She presses a finger to her temple. Her bones are solid again.  
  
Kelly is more rubbery than he was last night. Even his smallest movements cause water to spurt from his pores.   
  
“The truth about me is bound to be more flattering than whatever it is you people think. I’ve never drank the tears of mutant babies. Then again, my detractors would say that’s only because no one’s offered me a taste.” He wheezes at his own joke, then cuts himself off to catch his breath.   
  
To avoid Kelly’s external and internal presence, Rogue cranes her head around the room for inspiration for escape. They’re sealed in completely. No cracks.  
  
“Anyway, he already told me how you take from people. I think he wanted me to try to hurt you, so you’d murder me. He’s trying to make you like him. I don’t think you can be. You’re just a scared young woman. I don’t think you want to be a mutant any more than I do.”  
  
“Don’t compare yourself to me,” she snaps. The more he gets to talk, the more he comes bubbling to the surface. She needs to put him down, shut him up. “You’re a bigoted, egotistical opportunist hypocrite. You threw away your ‘family values’ for a string of barely legal mistresses who held your hand and walked your pathetic mommy issues all the way to the bank. And you got down on your knees and you begged Nora not to leave you, but this time she had somebody else. She really did love you. Now she hates you. You use people – ”  
  
“And I do it without conscience, because I expect them to love me. I demand it, even though I’m too selfish to love them back. Young lady, those words you’re trying to use against me are things I’ve told myself again and again. I’m in therapy.” Long trails of spit drip from his lips as he chuckles mirthlessly. “Mutants should know better than anybody, you can’t help the way you’re born.”  
  
“That’s lazy.”  
  
“I know that.”  
  
“No you don’t. You think what you do in public is so important it shouldn’t matter what you do in private. What is it you tell people? That stupid metaphor.”  
  
“It’s true. I was. I was the hammer, not the blacksmith. The vast majority of American citizens do not have mutant powers. But even greater numbers won’t be able to stand up to mutant aggression without the legislative force to back them up. They needed me to serve their best interests. Every villain is a hero to someone else. And vise-versa.”  
  
“So then Magneto is your big, bad villain, but how is he any different from you? He turned you into a mutant and now you’re sick. You want me to feel sorry for you, and I do. But that doesn’t change the fact that you support places like Southaven. You want to turn mutants normal no matter who gets hurt.”  
  
“Don’t you want help?” His head, resting against the wall, bends with the curve of the rock. His eyes take in Rogue disbelievingly. “You’re so young. You’re going to spend the rest of your life covered up like that. Seventy, eighty years. How are you going to stand it? People deprived of physical contact eventually go insane.”   
  
Rogue blinks against the sting. “You’re just saying that because you blame your mother’s postpartum depression for the way you are. But you saw. She couldn’t bring herself to hold your brother, either, and he turned out fine.”  
  
Kelly closes his eyes at that. “They’ve done studies. You’ll go nuts if you don’t get help. You’re like a cancer victim who bombs medical laboratories because animal testing is cruel.”  
  
“I wasn’t a patient at Southaven. I was the test chimp.”  
  
“I’m not a doctor. I don’t know what or why they did whatever it is that they did to you. But, you know, one chimp can end up saving a lot of lives.”  
  
“So no one cares that a hundred people – human beings – end up brain damaged.”  
  
“What happened to Carol Danvers was a surgical risk. The best, most cutting-edge research points to the amygdala being the seat of mutant powers. The procedure could have worked.”  
  
“The doctors told you maybe, but it was best to wait year. You threatened funding.”  
  
“And that makes me a monster. The American people cannot wait for hope. What do you think this country will look like in a year? Tensions are only getting worse – ”  
  
“You provoked them!”  
  
“Terrorist attacks, young lady. Murders. Kidnappings. Robberies. Mutant gangs are practically running Los Angeles. Mutants laugh in the face of rule of law, and why shouldn’t they? Bleeding hearts keep us unprotected, because they don’t want to see the threat. It’s not nice. They’d rather believe every mutant is a Jean Grey or a Hank McCoy. But even they have their secrets. They’ll lose control eventually. Who will trust them then?”  
  
Kelly is stopped by his own panting and coughing. Misery dulls his fever bright eyes.  
  
“Yeah. The thought of the ‘freaks-in-suits’ failing doesn’t make you so gleeful anymore. People like Jean Grey are willing to fight people like Magneto. They do it on behalf of people who hate them and people like you. I mean the way you are now. You’ve been a mutant almost a whole day. You don’t want world domination. You just want your family back.”  
  
“I want more than that. I tried to turn a negotiation into a war. If you get me out of here alive, I’ll do whatever it takes to fix that. I’ll turn in my hammer.”   
  
“And be what instead?” Rogue can’t exactly picture him a hippie flower stuck in the barrel of some soldier’s gun.  
  
“I’ll say I was wrong. I’m still a senator. I’ll let Hank McCoy build a bridge out of me. Just…use your powers. Get me to a good doctor. Save my life. I’ll make it worth it.”  
  
She believes him. Of course Kelly would be self-serving enough to switch sides. “You just want to continue to control the debate.”  
  
“The sin of control. It’s the entire issue, isn’t it? Control. Chaos. Some people say there’s nothing wrong with mutants, as long as they can be controlled. Other people say, ‘Don’t hate the mutant, hate the mutation.’”   
  
Kelly runs a hand over his mouth. He’s finding it difficult to direct its movement. Everything he’s said has been garbled and slow. Rogue gives him time to push the words out only because she’s sickened by the thought that any one of them could be the last of a clearly dying man.  
  
“You hate your mutation because you can’t control it. You hated Southaven because you couldn’t control your treatments. We don’t agree with the madman who trapped us here, because he seems to us a lot like chaos. Every person has their limit. It’s all just a slippery slope. At what point do you become afraid of falling?”  
  
“Fear doesn’t make wrong into right. How you stop yourself from falling matters.”  
  
“Imagine it’s someone you care about. What then?”  
  
Her hesitation is pure reflex, even though the answer should be irrefutable. “It still matters.”  
  
Carol has been remarkably quiet through all of this, probably because Rogue’s so hazy. She doesn’t intend to leave Kelly behind, so she’s glad Carol can’t fight her over it.  
  
Rogue closes the discussion by climbing to her feet. It takes a moment to blink away the lights floating in front of her vision. She lurches to the entry and knocks on the flat metal sheet that covers it instead of the prison bars. The metal is thin, and she can’t hear anything on the other side. She crosses the cell and knocks on the window covering. It’s much thicker, and Rogue isn’t feeling all that strong.   
  
“All right. We have to take the inside route. We’re going to fly over the dam, and we’re going to make it through the tunnels without being seen. Then we’ll take the helicopter to Westchester. There’s a good doctor there. With secrets.”   
  
“You know Jean Grey.”  
  
“She doesn’t turn people away if they need help.” Rogue picks up the damp glove Magneto took off her and puts it back on. To Kelly she says, “Neither do I, I guess. But I don’t forgive you.”  
  
“I wouldn’t even consider it, were I in your position. But what about the machine that did this to me?”  
  
The light was so bright, even the memory makes Rogue squint. She can still feel that light seeping into Kelly’s body down to his cells, scrambling his DNA even after Magneto was literally peeled from the machine. The same machine he no doubt intends to put her in.  
  
Bastard sonuvabitch coward, she thinks with a shuddering jolt of adrenaline. It’s as close to direct as Logan has spoken to her yet.   
  
“I know I should do something, break it somehow. But we don’t have the time.” And, honestly, she never wants to have to see the travesty of it in person. “Besides, Magneto didn’t have me last time the UN Summit was supposed to happen, and he didn’t go through with it then.”  
  
Rogue searches for a place to grip the seam where the metal sheet meets rock wall.  
  
“He had Telford Porter as his ace in the hole then. And that blue…” Kelly sputters, landing on, in his mind, the worst possible insult, “…woman – She posed as Henry to convince me how important international opinion is and that Summit had to go on.”  
  
“The Summit isn’t the issue anymore. Without me to do his dirty work, chances are Magneto will just have to try again with another venue. In the meantime, we can tell anybody who wants to know exactly where to find him.”  
  
Finally. Near the bottom right-hand corner she finds a small crack. She drops to her knees to start prying it away by inches.  
  
“Can you be any quieter? It might echo,” Kelly cautions unhelpfully. He staggers over to take a look at her work. “From the noise, it sounded like you should have made more progress.”   
  
Rogue pauses, the hole now large to stick an arm through. She could tell him that she’s doing pretty damn well for just having woke up from over twelve hours of drug-induced sleep. Instead, she chooses a subtle reminder that he’s next to useless.   
  
“You’re dripping on me,” she monotones, and Kelly backs off.  
  
A few more minutes of teeth-clenching, nerve-wracking exertion, and she’s confident she can wiggled her shoulders through. Then she remembers she inherited her momma’s hips and devotes another minute to filling out the exit.  
  
Rogue stops to listen to the silence outside before poking her head out for a quick scan. No sign of a bridge, meaning no unscheduled visits. So far so good. She wiggles free.  
  
From behind, she hears a gasp for help. Kelly oozed through the hole, and he’s too wobbly to get back on his feet. Gingerly, Rogue tries to lend him support with her knee and impetus by pulling up on his collar, but the sight of his neck lulling to the side at an impossible angle almost makes her let go in horror.  
  
“Okay.” She mimics his deep breaths. “Let’s only do this once. I’m going to put you on my back. You just hold on however you can.”  
  
All Kelly can seem to manage is a wheeze. Guilt eats at her. She should have taken time to make sure he wouldn’t have to use his jelly monster abilities to get out. Rogue doesn’t need to be an MD to see that he’s holding himself together through sheer will.   
  
“Do you need to rest?” she asks, trying to sound equally concerned with his well-being as she is about their extremely pressing escape.  
  
“No,” he says, wisely not shaking his head. “Go.”  
  
With her free hand, Rogue pulls up her hood to protect them both from contact. Then she slowly, carefully dips her shoulders under his chest and lifts him onto her back. God. She could’ve picked him up without Carol’s powers. He’s Jell-O inside a leaky hot water bottle.   
  
She starts forward slowly. “Are you all right? Hanging in there? Make a noise, please.”  
  
He moans, and Rogue’s heart continues to pound. Good for maintaining adrenaline, but bad for giving her the shakes. It’s a long way across that gaping divide, and she can’t even get her usual running start without losing Kelly off her back.   
  
Deep breath. She stands with her toes on the very edge of the chasm. No problem whatsoever. Carol could do this from day one. Just jump up and don’t fall back down. Couldn’t be simpler. Rogue bends her knees, pleads with an all-loving higher power she wishes existed, and leaps.  
  
Straight drop for a moment before fear pushes her up. She arcs and slumps, arcs and slumps. Her muscles quiver, her sweat and Kelly’s fluids run down her aching spine. Carol is unnervingly still.   
  
Almost there, but Rogue begins to sink faster. If she makes it to the bottom, there might be a way out but it would be way too far from the helicopter with Kelly to worry about. And she’s so tired. At the lip of the waterfall, she does one last arc and lands on her feet then her knees. Kelly slides off her back, groaning. His arm flops too hard against the jagged rock.  
  
When she was seven, little Marie leaped from her parents’ dresser onto their waterbed. The pop, knowing it was a belt-worthy trespass, was the most horrifying sound she’d heard yet.  
  
Ten years later, on her hands and knees in a mutated villain’s lair, that same sound causes Rogue to choke on a gasp and a sob. Her shaking hands go to scoop up the water spraying from the end of Kelly’s empty sleeve.   
  
“Mutants – ” Senator Robert Kelly’s old disgust is back, she can hear it in his raspy voice.  
  
“Don’t,” she says, desperate for something better for them both.  
  
The wetness from Robert’s fingers seeps in through the fabric of her glove. “Mutants are afraid of normal people because they’re afraid of themselves. Aren’t they?” Off her emphatic nod, Robert sighs. “I banked my career on that. I wanted them to be afraid, like me. Fifty-two years of living in fear.”  
  
Afraid of getting to close, afraid of trusting people. Rogue hates him for his confession, because it’s a dying man’s last grasp at immortality. He’s addressing her forehead, the way people who understand the true evil of her mutation inevitably do. He’s digging up sympathies, burrowing a home, knowing a part of him will survive to haunt the crevices in her brain until her death do they part.  
  
Robert’s voice turns soft and the gentleness he normally reserves for his son settles on his undulating features. “I guess you have one less person to be afraid of.”   
  
His chest sinks in. He gurgles on water bubbling up from his lungs to his throat. His right eye remains fixed on her as it slides to the side. The pressure builds against his translucent skin, against the heavy lump between her vocal cords. He bursts and she screams, impossibly cold water raining onto her, dripping from her hood and her nose and her lips.   
  
Rogue screams and shivers, clutches the solidness of her skull as she wobbles to her feet. Sabretooth is barreling toward her. Toad drops down in front of her.   
  
She turns and runs right off the edge of the cliff, her arms and legs pinwheeling against the nothingness of empty space.  
  
Adrenaline turns her freefall into a slant. She lands heels first and rolls and picks herself up to stagger to the nearest tunnel. A dulled survival instinct keeps her moving through arbitrary twists and turns. The only light she has is from sunrays through the cracks in the rock wall. Rogue thinks she’s trudging uphill, but she could just as easily be dragging herself down into hell.   
  
Direction doesn’t matter, really, since probably everybody but Sabretooth has anticipated her foolhardy get-to-the-choppa plan. Her urgency died with Kelly. The best she can do at the moment is keep hidden. It occurs to her – more like Logan, hard to tell – to circle back, confuse her scent. The passages are endlessly identical, but there are clues enough if she pays attention. And she does, excessively. All her faculties focused ahead because, from behind and inside, the monsters are out to get her.  
  
A subtle change in temperature alerts Rogue to an opening barely her size. From it, a narrow trickle of water falls onto her sneakers. Nausea makes her step back.   
  
Get it together. When she turned the corner, the ocean moved to her left. Meaning the channel runs further inside the cavern. So then where…  
  
The waterfall. Of course. The one place she was hoping to avoid. Rogue sighs, grits her teeth, and crawls into the widening channel. Her inner Logan would inadvertently lead her to grudging heroics. He so would.  
  
Magneto’s master machine of messy mutations and mass murders is hardly more than a blurred outline from her vantage point behind the half-curtain of the waterfall. With supreme effort, Rogue manages to use the curve of the channel’s wall to turn herself around. She works out her frustrations with the soles of her shoes as she kicks herself a better view.  
  
Head first again, Rogue looks beyond the rushing water to assess her options. The machine is ludicrously shaped, rendering it difficult to tell where it’s most vulnerable. The light comes out of the top, so maybe she can drop a big boulder or something on it and call it a day. Or a suicide attempt, depending on how personally Magneto took that whole “go fuck yourself” thing.  
  
Damn it, why did the machine have to be so out in the open? Giving up the relative safety of her hidey-hole seems less than intelligent. But, then again, hide has always been her go to strategy even when she’s been the one on the seek.   
  
Rogue crouches on the lip of the tunnel, looking above and around for something heavy. What she sees is a figure approaching the machine. Gasping in a yelp, she ducks back into the hole. One hand covering her own mouth, after a minute or so she dares a peek.  
  
Whoever it is has moved around to the back of the machine. Metal sings against metal and sabotaging sparks fly out.  
  
Before she even consciously makes the decision, Rogue has leapt onto the flat, metal walkway. She sprints toward the smoking machine, on top of which Logan poses with a satisfied smirk.  
  
“Thought you’d make it down here.”  
  
Rogue slows, her common sense breathless at the sight of him at her rescue, so collected and triumphant, so here. So impossibly too good to be true.  
  
“Logan…”  
  
“It’s good you’re cautious, but we gotta hurry. The X-Men can only keep them distracted so long.”  
  
Not exactly a definitive answer. Still, she keeps toward him, as if magnetized. “But how – ”   
  
“Ain’t always reliable, but Charles’ got a secret machine just for telepaths.”  
  
Hope bubbles up on recognition. “Right, that’s how he tracked Sabretooth to Canada and found us.”  
  
Logan squats on the edge of the machine’s raised platform. “Bet you wish he hadn’t,” he says ruefully.  
  
“Bet you’re right,” Rogue replies, gazing up at his half-smile through her lashes.   
  
The hairs on the back of her goosepimply arms stand on end, though she can’t quite say whether it’s due to the unease rocking her stomach or the warmth spreading through her chest. Logan has his hand beneath her hood and he’s stroking her hair, drawing her closer.  
  
“You okay?” he mummers, not breaking eye contact with her.  
  
“I’ll be okay.”  
  
Logan’s right hand pulls her scarf from under her cloak and holds the thin material across the bottom half of her face. Rogue’s pulse rattles her brain. She balances herself against his knees. He adjusts his hold so that one hand is free to caress the back of her neck.  
  
Rogue swallows, not sure how to hold her lips. His are parted and moving forward by inches. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of this before? she thinks at the same time as, How could he want to kiss me again after I almost killed him?  
  
Her stomach flips again, and she thinks it’s the Logan inside her head. He remembers how kissing the Rogue inevitably ends. He also knows this isn’t the time or the place. Survival instinct, both of it.  
  
Mouthing Logan’s name to stop him only erases the distance between them. His mouth is hot on the other side of her scarf, but Rogue’s suddenly aware of other details, like how the mend she made on his threadbare jeans isn’t there and that he’s making an awful lot of movement with his free hand.  
  
Against her lips, he says, “What’s the matter, baby?”  
  
Rogue punches him right in the wide-open crotch. Logan has not, does not, and will never call her “baby.” Gross.  
  
His eyes go yellow as he lets out a wholly feminine noise of pain. Rogue smacks his arm away, and a syringe falls out of his sleeve. But doesn’t hit the ground.   
  
Not bothering to look around for Magneto, she jumps straight into flight. She doesn’t make it too far before something ropes around her ankle. From his perch an a tree, Toad starts reeling her in by his tongue. She kicks at it viciously until he has to let go. A needle’s prick breaks her skin, but she knocks the syringe away before it can administer the full dose.  
  
Caught in a nightmare, Rogue loses more and more control over her body. She’s swimming in the air, clawing at it to stay up. Eventually, her eyes roll back. She plummets.  
  
Paralyzed, she drifts in and out. Like when Marie got her wisdom teeth out, she’s aware that something awful is happening to her but unable to feel it and therefore unable to care. Rogue isn’t locked up, just left to the side. At some point, a boat appears. Later, Mystique kneels painfully on her hair.   
  
The same grin stays on her face as she transforms from herself to Carl the Janitor to the lunch lady to Bobby and back to Logan. When that doesn’t get a rise, she turns into Senator Kelly. His fingers brush over Rogue’s crown. “It’s getting to be quite the graveyard up there,” she comments with Kelly’s mouth but her own voice.  
  
Rogue tries to spit, but it just ends up dribble on her lips.  
  
Mystique is Mystique again. She grows out her fingernails so she can trace Rogue’s skin with them. Rogue shrinks back. Absorbing her wouldn’t be a way out, just a new way to get trapped.   
  
Her touch is reverent in its near-recklessness. “So much potential,” Mystique muses. She scratches Rogue’s cheek hard enough to leave stinging tracks. “Wasted.”   
  
Mystique shifts her long, scaled legs and tilts Rogue’s head so they’re both gazing at Magneto, who loads the boat with his arms out like Jesus on the cross.   
  
“He sees something useful in you.”  
  
Rogue works her mouth until she manages, “Flattered.”  
  
“Erik pushes me past the limits of what I think I’m capable of. Another mutant told me he would. A blind woman saw me, and she saw you. A version of you.” Mystique grips a chunk of Rogue’s bangs and lets the dark brown strands fall into her eyes. “But so much more.” The serene expression on her face is Mother Mary meets Mary Magdalene.  
  
Blind prophets, messiah complexes, forced martyrdom, and brave new worlds. All of it raises bile in the back of Rogue’s throat. “You’re both bullshit psychotic. They’ll die.” She strains her neck and yells again, “They’ll die!”  
  
Magneto’s voice rings out. “A percentage might not survive their initial mutations, true. Senator Kelly has shown us that genetics are a delicate art. Nevertheless, my machine has worked beautifully in the past. And with any great change, sacrifices must be made.” Magneto clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “My dear girl.”  
  
Mystique grins that manic grin of hers, and tops up Rogue’s sedative.   
  
What feels like a blink, and Rogue is on the boat, her wrists tied up. Magneto looks out at the blurry green outline of the Statue of Liberty.  
  
“Magnificent, isn’t she?”  
  
“I’ve seen it,” Rogue slurs. Age thirteen. Family road trip. Dad said flying was cheating, but Momma knew he did it for her because she hates airplanes. He has his moments, as far as husbands go. She married a good man –  
  
No, don’t remember. Concentrate.   
  
“I first saw her in 1949. America was going to be the land of tolerance. Of peace.”  
  
“Half a century later, you’re back. To kill me.”   
  
Gravely, he replies, “Yes.”  
  
Bitterness twists her mouth. “Why?”   
  
“Because there is no land of tolerance, there is no peace. Not here, not anywhere else. Women and children, whole families destroyed simply because they were born different from those in power.”   
  
He kneels in front of her, no longer playing the kindly granddad but the apologetically damning preacher.   
  
“Well after tonight the world’s powerful will be just like us. They will return home as brothers. As mutants. Our cause will be theirs. Your sacrifice will mean our survival.”   
  
Sabretooth appears at the top of the ladder, startling her.  
  
“I’ll understand if that comes as a small consolation,” Magneto stands, all superior purpose. “Put her into the machine. I’ll raise it.”   
  
The wind is cold at the top of the Statue of Liberty, but it brings no sense of clarity. Time is still slipping past when she’s not looking.   
  
Her body is weak. Her mind is empty. Her conscience is bursting. They’ll die. She’ll kill them, because Magneto has manipulated all her choices. He got her through pride at the train station. She thought being carried out unconscious in a sack was an affront to her grownup decisions. At least then she’d now have the privilege of a damsel in distress. Southaven has made her stronger, no doubt, but at the cost of her innocence.   
  
Rogue twists her bound wrist. Left hand, the same one Carol in her desolation grabbed hold of and held tight. Where’s that strength you made me take? she wants to know. Rogue rattles her restraints. If I die, you’ll never fly again. Not a stir.   
  
Fine, so maybe you all want me dead. But where’s the glee? Primo mutie on mutie violence, Eugene, your favorite...Sinners getting what’s coming to them, right, Lora?...Good news, David, you’ll be free of my monster…Oh, come on. Eight months I’ve listened to your crap commentary! One of you answer me...Momma, please?  
  
The void in her mind is a gaping black hole, as full as it is empty.  
  
No, you can’t. Don’t leave me all alone now. Say something! Somebody.   
  
Silence.  
  
Tears drip pitifully from her chin. “Help.” She pushes the plea out onto a world that doesn’t care.   
  
A world she’s not done a thing to endear herself to. “I don’t owe you nothin’,” Logan said, all those weeks ago.   
  
But he saved her life anyway, and she saved his. I like you, she told Logan the second day they met, meaning it whether he deserved it or not. Just yesterday, he told Rogue, “I’ll take care of you,” and meant it more than he or anyone ever had.   
  
Even though nobody can deserve a thing like that.  
  
So she’s not going out silently. She’s not going out gracefully, either. She’s going to cry and beg and scream until she has no voice.   
  
Locked in the towering torch of symbolic new beginnings, she tugs at her restraints with all her muted strength and gives into the life-affirming sensation of terror. Her head might be a graveyard, but her redemption is worth so much more.


	4. Life and limb for a kiss of death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You’re so full of shit. If you were really so righteous   
> it’d be you in that thing.”  
> – Logan –

Logan can barely tilt his neck far enough to see the top of the Statue of Liberty, collared tight as he is in Cyclops’ leather daddy getup.   
  
“The torch,” the man with the stupid-ass plan says, motioning the start of follow the leader.  
  
“Hey, if you wanna go buy some souvenirs, don’t let me stop you.” Logan points his thumb back at the jet camouflaged under the George Washington Bridge. “Meanwhile, Storm can drop me off up top, and I’ll save the girl express.”  
  
“That would be quicker,” Storm agrees, giving him a second to feel superior before she exchanges semi-amused looks with Jean. “Except the X-Jet is completely made of metal.”  
  
“Like you,” Cyclops puts in. “So stay out of Magneto’s way.”  
  
Logan takes a step forward. “You wanna run that plan by me again?” He didn’t put on this dopey goddamn uniform and strap himself into that aerial deathtrap just to be put on bitch detail. Magneto has it coming, and Logan’s going to deliver.   
  
Cyclops lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I asked you before if you’d have a problem taking orders. Magneto knows we’re coming, but the rest of the world doesn’t know the X-Men exist. That’s part of our mission.”  
  
“You may talk hush-hush, but I’m not the one who gave the train station a new sunroof, pal.”  
  
“No, you were the one who stabbed Rogue through the chest.”   
  
“Scott,” Jean snaps, visibly drained from the stimulant and the stress and Cerebro.   
  
Logan trains his glare back on Cyclops. “Hey, why don’t you take your little mission and stick it up your – ”  
  
Thunder crashes. Storm’s eyes are as fogged over as the harbor. “We work as a team,” she says. “There’s a seventeen year-old girl and a city full of people to save. Settle this.” In that moment, she’s as compelling as the Professor ever could be.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Cyclops states, looking each of them in the eye sincerely.  
  
Share the burden, Logan reminds himself. Do right by Marie. He motions Cyclops forward with only a minor undercurrent of sarcasm.  
  
Judging by the claw marks, Sabretooth took out the guards at the base of the Statue awhile ago. Jean doesn’t find any pulses. Cyclops sets his jaw, and Logan reads his thoughts as a red scroll across his visor: “Two I didn’t save.” Heroes. The guilt only lets them stay shiny so long.   
  
They climb in through the busted door, heads swiveling. Magneto’s goons could be anywhere. Cyclops motions to keep silent, so they can’t get the jump as easily. Logan takes the rear as the four of them file into a room full of overpriced junk practically on their tiptoes.   
  
Little knives stab at Logan’s eardrums when he sets of the metal detector. He promptly sticks his claws in it.   
  
Through the sparks, Fearless Leader gives him an unappreciative look. Logan lets his middle claw do the apologizing. Cyclops takes the abuse with the derisive half-smile of somebody with a working sense of humor. Logan sniffs the air suspiciously. Cologne’s unmistakable, so One-Eye checks out. But there’s still that smell.  
  
“There’s someone here.”  
  
“Where?”   
  
“I dunno. Keep your eye open,” he recommends, slipping out of the room’s dimly lit center.  
  
“Logan.” Cyclops loses sight of him. “Damn it.”  
  
From the shadows, a ripple of blue catches his eye. A moment later, that shapeshifting bitch steps out wearing an X-Man Wolverine suit. “I know there’s someone here, I just cant see him.” Cyclops, Storm, and Jean busy looking around, Mystique brandishes a set of claws.   
  
Logan comes at her from the side, knocking her into the ground. She’s faster on her feet even in his body. She twists his face into a sadistic grin as she merrily prances out of his reach. He kicks her back into the maintenance hall and they square off. Her second set of claws shoot out. The savage delight she emanates from his eyes puts a look of disgust on his own face.  
  
She blows him a kiss, and it’s right up there with the goddamn creepiest things he’s ever seen.  
  
“Logan!” Cyclops shouts, his hand to his visor.  
  
The grin falls from Mystique’s stolen face as they both put out their hands to keep from getting blasted.  
  
Mystique slices through some cables, slamming the door on their private party from hell.   
  
She gets him with an elbow to the forehead. Logan retaliates with a backhand claw swipe that would have cut her in half. He growls, his frustration readily apparent.   
  
“Tick-tock.”  
  
“You’re prettier with your mouth shut.” Stuck-up barfly told him that once. He fucked her friend instead.  
  
Mystique runs at Logan, bending him over a metal bar. She suffocates him with one hand. “I kissed her goodbye for you,” she uses his voice to leer. Against the leather glove between them, she presses her lips.  
  
Furious at the implication, Logan bites down on her palm and shoves her off of him. She slashes his face, but he slices through her flimsy excuse for adamantium. She shrieks and runs.  
  
The next room is flooded in red lights. Logan ambles in, limbering up as he does. She comes at him with a flip, but he has no qualms about jacking himself in the face. Getting some height, she spin kicks back into her lithe, femme fatal self. When she hits the ground, she licks her bleeding lip with a promise in her eyes that says been a naughty boy.  
  
Disturbingly distracting thoughts swirl around Logan’s brain, keeping her on top. She contorts herself around him, cracking his back and choking him. Impotently, he tries to gut her like a scaly blue fish. She runs her fingernails down his cheek slowly, drawing blood. He can smell Marie on her hands. Twisted bitch, using his face and the kid’s trust to fucking prey on her.  
  
Mystique catches his renewed ferocity. Before he can furiously break from her grasp, she kicks him square in the nuts.  
  
He’s just managed to straighten himself up when he catches a steel chain in his claws. He drags her in so they’re face to face, but she flips away to hit him with a goddamn door. Logan claws through it. She saves herself with a ballerina move. Like a damn spider monkey, she climbs up a pipe upside down.  
  
Leaving Logan on the ground, balls in hand, wondering how the fuck he could be losing.  
  
All five sense at maximum alert, Logan tries to pick up Mystique’s trail again. He’s more than prepared to finish her off.  
  
Lightening glints from the tinted windows.   
  
“Logan, is that you?” Storm’s voice, from behind.  
  
What a tired trick. “Shh.” He sniffs once more for confirmation. “The other one ain’t far away.”  
  
“Come on. We have to regroup.” It’s even something Storm would say.  
  
Closer. That’s it. Right behind him.  
  
“I know, but there’s a problem.” He pivots and sinks his claws right into her squishy entrails.   
  
Storms gentle eyes flare in shock, then cloud over as she gasps.  
  
“You’re not part of the group.”  
  
Her eyes go yellow, and the claws reappear as fingers. Storm’s white hair turns to red.   
  
Savagely, Logan retracts his claws only to shoot them out again. When she shrieks, he replies, “Shouldn’t have touched her.”  
  
“You’re a saint,” Mystique hisses with Marie’s face, blood visible in her mouth.   
  
Her accusation misses the mark. Logan doesn’t need to be a saint, just not the kind of pervert Mystique gets off on. She’s made the difference so obvious to him, he should almost thank her.   
  
She falls off his claws, completely herself as she breathes her last.  
  
Logan brushes himself off, lets his bruises heal, and goes off to do exactly what she said. Regroup.  
  
He opens and door and there’s Cyclops with his hand to his visor again. He’s half-carrying Jean.  
  
“Hey – Hey. It’s me.”  
  
Cyclops has gotten a little savvier. “Prove it.”  
  
“You’re a dick.”  
  
The Boy Scout takes a second to decide if he’ll let that kind of language slide. “Okay.”  
  
Never would’ve guessed it takes high-stress situations to loosen Cyclops up enough to be passably human.   
  
From the stairs above, Storm catches their attention. “Come on.”  
  
It’s a long, steady climb up to the top. They take assessment of their situation: Mystique and Toad eliminated, leaving Sabretooth and Magneto. In the spirit of getting fucking on with it, Logan doesn’t comment on the fact that it took three supposedly trained superheroes to dispatch one leap frog whose best weapon was his tongue, for shit’s sake.  
  
They’re barely inside Lady Liberty’s head when Logan looks up at the ceiling and finds he can’t look back down. “Everybody get out of here.”  
  
“What is it?” Cyclops asks instead of doing anything useful.  
  
“I can’t move.” Logan is flung halfway to the ceiling.  
  
A piece of green metal clamps Storm low on the wall. Cyclops tries to blast a piece coming for him, but he just ends up with his arms strapped down. He’s facing Jean, who can’t budge the metal no matter how hard she grits her teeth.  
  
Magneto flows down, palms up. “Ah, my brothers. Welcome.” He looks over at Logan. “And you. Let’s point those claws of yours in a safer direction.” Effortlessly, Magneto bends Logan’s arms. He clamps his fists square against his sternum and seals him in with part of the wall.  
  
Sabretooth jumps down, amping up Logan’s already high level of motherfucking pissed off Wolverine.  
  
To Cyclops, Magneto warns, “You better close your eyes.” Sabretooth pulls off his visor and drops it to the ground.  
  
Eyelids squeezed as tight as his jaw, Cyclops grunts, “Storm, fry ‘em.”  
  
“Oh yes, a bolt of lighting into a huge copper conductor. I thought you lived at a school.”  
  
Sabretooth’s deadened eyes are trained directly on Logan. He growls nearly inaudibly, but the beast deep down in Logan recognizes the challenge.   
  
“Mystique.” Magneto gets only the crackle of a dead line for a response. “Mystique.”   
  
Logan opens his mouth to drop the news that he killed the bitch, but Jean cuts in. “I’ve seen Teleford Porter.”  
  
“So, my teleport managed to break out of Hiram Prison. And to find you. He’s become even more powerful than I could’ve imagined.”  
  
“He’s dead,” Jean reveals.  
  
“It’s true.”   
  
Storm had been the one watching him, while Jean fixed Cerebro, Cyclops calmed the students, and Logan managed his frustrations in the high-tech gym they called the Danger Room.   
  
“I saw him die. Like those people down there will die.”  
  
“I fail to see the connection. You know as well as I the brutalities visited on those poor souls in Hiram Prison.”  
  
“They did experiment on him,” Jean concedes. “But I performed the autopsy myself. It was brain cancer.”  
  
“Your machine killed him. Slowly, but it did kill him.” Storm keeps steady eye contact as Magneto bends down to her.  
  
“I don’t believe you,” he enunciates. A steaming load, far as Logan can tell. Any sonuvabitch ready and willing to murder one of his blessed “brothers” for the cause ain’t about to be tearjerked by elevated cancer risks.  
  
Storm keeps on trying to appeal to an insane man’s reason. “You can’t be that certain.”  
  
“My dear, someone has to be,” Magneto replies, as if he’s the one making noble sacrifices.   
  
The faint pop of fireworks from Ellis Island alerts them that the UN Summit festivities have begun. All the ducks lining themselves up in rows.  
  
Magneto pushes himself away from Storm’s condemning gaze dramatically. “Why do none of you understand what I’m trying to do? Those people down there, they control our fate and the fate of every other mutant.” He waits for doubt to flicker in Storm’s eyes. Jean is just as unswayed. “Well. Soon our fate will be theirs.”  
  
Beneath the sound of the fireworks, Logan hears the echo of Marie’s small, strained voice begging for help. His blood boils.  
  
“You’re so full of shit. If you were really so righteous it’d be you in that thing.”  
  
Magneto turns the full impact of his colorless gaze on Logan.   
  
Louder now, Marie repeats, “Help! Somebody help me!”  
  
They all hear her now. The X-Men increase their struggles to get free as Magneto silently raises himself above his so-called brothers.  
  
“Please! Somebody please help me!”  
  
Her voice is brittle. She must have been yelling for an eternity by now. Magneto had to have done something to drain her strength. Her hysterics mean she knows what’s coming next.   
  
“Somebo – ” Her voice drops too low for him to make out anymore.   
  
Sweat drips from his forehead into his stinging eyes. He tests how much room he has in his restraints.   
  
Keep calling, Marie, he wills her. This ain’t the end. Don’t give up on me yet.  
  
She’s up there all alone, tied up and helpless, knowing that bastard sonuvabitch coward is on his way to lay his hands on her. He’ll force himself inside her head. She’ll fight him, and it’ll hurt her so much. So goddamn much.  
  
Logan lets out a roar for Marie to hear, and unleashes his claws through his ribs and out his back. His heart bleeds where he nicked it.  
  
The restraints give way against his bulk. His name is on Jean’s lips. He plunges straight down, landing spread-eagle hard enough for his lungs to bruise.   
  
Hard enough to fool Sabretooth, who stands above him. He growls. Logan opens his eyes. Quicker than the dumb bastard can respond, Logan has his claws shoved as far into him as they’ll go.  
  
Sabretooth sends him flying outside onto the Statue of Liberty’s crown. A foot more and it would’ve been a hell of a long way down.   
  
A paw picks him up by the back of his uniform. As he’s thrown through the cold night air, Logan grimly notes that Fangs’ obvious healing factor is apparently faster than his own. On his sore side, he hits the ground. In one fluid motion, he rolls to his feet and unleashes his claws.   
  
Sabretooth’s response is to cold-clock him into next week. Logan lifts his ringing head to find his tag hanging in front of his double vision. While Sabretooth is busy growling his triumph, Logan breaks the chain with a claw.   
  
“This is mine.” A decent man can make that claim on an object. But even as he drips his tag into his uniform, the crude fact remains – having it back does nothing to alleviate the enormous pressure threatening to break him from the inside.   
  
Abruptly, Logan’s hurtling toward the city’s skyline again, fireworks bursting in air behind him. He manages to thrust a set of claws into a point on the Statue’s crown. Momentum spins him three hundred and sixty degrees until he’s back on his feet.   
  
When Sabretooth squares off across from him, animal to animal, something on the razor’s edge of familiar cuts through Logan. Sabretooth has always been stronger.   
  
He knows that intimately, without anyone having to tell him. Same way he knows Storm’s serenity has to come out of a chaotic past, that Cyclops must be a momma’s boy, that Jean has another side buried deep. Same way he recognized Marie in that dive in Laughlin City, hard as he tried to deny her. Facts are facts. It’s what he chooses to do about them that counts.  
  
So, knowing he has an snowman’s chance in hell, Logan launches himself at Sabretooth’s throat. He gets him on his back. Logan pulls back his elbow, ready to take off his head.   
  
From above, Marie lets out an unholy scream. Nothing, not even certain defeat, can stop Logan from looking up in alarm.   
  
Sabretooth hurls Logan off Lady Liberty for the third time. Logan waits until he’s halfway down her face before he sticks in a claw. Sabretooth doesn’t even bother to glance down for the satisfaction of seeing his opponent’s mangled body cratered in pavement. Bastard’s stupidity flies in the face of instinct.  
  
Quickly and precisely, Logan punches pockmarks into the historic national monument as he scales back up.   
  
Back on top, Logan looks down into the head. The X-Men are still rendered useless. But when Sabretooth touches a thick fingernail to Storm’s cheek and tells her, “You owe me a scream,” the look in Jean’s eye makes it clear that shit isn’t going to stand.  
  
Logan jumps down to make it easier for her. A little breathless, he says, “Hey, bub. I’m not finished with you yet.”  
  
A cracking snap arrests all their attentions. Logan has to shield his eyes against the light as the torch explodes open. Marie’s screams blend with Magneto’s.  
  
Logan rips his eyes from the light to meet Jean’s fierce gaze. Woman has a plan.  
  
“Scott, when I tell you open your eyes.”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Trust me.”  
  
Logan holds up Cyclops’s visor. “You drop something?”  
  
Jean floats it into position and adjusts the blast. “Now.”  
  
Hot, red light hits Sabretooth square in the chest. Roaring, he rockets backward. Logan watches him all the way down. When he’s safely crashed into the splintered shards of some poor sap’s boat, Logan frees Storm, Jean, and Cyclops.   
  
“Thanks,” Cyclops says in a clear attempt to be the bigger man.  
  
Logan lifts his eyebrows ironically. “Don’t mention it.”  
  
The four of them line up on the edge of the gaping hole Cyclops punched Sabretooth through. Magneto is a gray lump below the thick, spreading light. Marie is alone on the top of the world. Still hollering her head off, so Logan knows the fight hasn’t left her.  
  
“Gotta get her out of there. Cyclops, can you hit it?”   
  
“The rings are moving too fast.”   
  
“Just shoot it!”   
  
“I’ll kill her.” Cyclops can’t hold the intensity of Logan’s gaze. “Storm, can you get me up there?”  
  
“I can’t control it like that. You could fly right over the torch.”   
  
A hardness threatens to settle on the half-masked face of the X-Men’s fearless leader. He could have taken Logan at his word. Marie’s not the only one running out of time. Right now, it’s save Marie and save the city. But in a few minutes it’s going to be save Marie or save the city. Someone Cyclops knows or faceless millions? The classic hero’s gambit.   
  
Just one more reason heroics ain’t Logan’s line of work.  
  
“Then let me go,” he volunteers. “If I don’t make it, then at least you can still blast the damn thing.” Cyclops can feel real noble for trying anyway, and then real pissed at Logan for blocking his shot.  
  
“All right, do it. Jean, use your power, try to steady him.”   
  
Storm backs up with a Hail Mary in her voice. “Hang onto something.”   
  
A strong wind kicks up instantly, lifting him off his feet. He looks back at Jean, the only person between him and the bottom of the harbor. His stomach lurches as he flips higher. Suspended upside down, he reaches out to catch hold of the machine. The wind stops, allowing Logan to push himself to his feet.  
  
From the side of the platform, Magneto does the same. Logan wonders how the hell that fucker is still conscious as he drops down into the bright light.  
  
Marie’s eyes are shut tight. The grip of her hands on the machine forces her body up. It’s agony where she is, but a least she’s still alive.   
  
Logan springs his claw to free her. Magneto has enough juice left to slow him down, bend his claws – It’s possible they’ll stay deformed. He imagines the gore. Every time – But the pain only compels him to push harder. His left hand set of claws are easier to control. Just a few more seconds. Hang in there, darlin’.  
  
Neck visibly straining, Marie hiccups a sob. The hair at her temples goes shock white.   
  
His claws clink against the metal rings. That’s it. Closer. His skeleton spasms with each clang. The thickening light must be almost to Ellis Island by now. Sparks fly out. Damn it, Cyclops, don’t try and be Captain America. You called her your student, so put her first. Christ’s sake. Just wait –  
  
Red flashes in his peripheral vision, striking Magneto and freeing up Logan’s claws to shatter the machine in an explosion of intensely dazzling luminosity.  
  
The opaque sky is heavy and black above the city’s shuddering glimmer. Suspended between the two is an abyss – silence and sound, death and life – three hundred feet up and entirely self-contained. A second holds an infinity.  
  
Cut through the restraints, and Logan and Marie is all there is.   
  
She’s delicate as a spider web, just as deceptively strong. The tremor he feels as he lifts her body is the ache of his own pulse.  
  
“Come on,” he murmurs.   
  
Her eyelashes don’t flutter when he touches the blanched strands of her hair. An external marker of internal wounds. She’s been aged against her will.  
  
“Come on.”  
  
He gets his glove off with his teeth and throws it to the side. His bare hand hangs above her immobile face. There are no cuts to heal over, just a mind relentlessly invaded. But his is an offering. He places his palm on her still warm skin. Closes his eyes.  
  
Logan waits for a pull that isn’t there. Life-force is too intangible a concept, so he thinks about his open vein pouring directly into her. He pushes. Nothing.  
  
Emotion seethes up and simmers over. Not an animal desperately howling, but a man choking on hope. He tips his nose against her chin and grips her hair. Presses her forehead to his lips. Please. Oh, goddamn it, please. No one could hold her closer.   
  
A tug. Tantalizingly slow. He kisses her forehead again, teeth bared in pain and gratitude. Weakness crashes over him. He cradles her head in the crook of his shoulder, grazes her mouth as the shock of paralysis sets in.   
  
The agonizing crawl of his burning skin forces his eyes open, along with three gashes from the fight with his sick double. Blood soaks his back. Every wound is owed to him – tonight alone how many times has he cheated death? – but what Logan gives to Marie is supposed to be a gift. He wants to be more than his history of violence.   
  
Nothing calms the rage like chasing the flavor of tobacco with an ice-cold brew. Except maybe a Rocky Mountain sunrise or the whistle of an axe splitting a log. The endlessness of the open road. A jukebox that doesn’t play anything this side of ’79. Greased up auto parts that fit together like a puzzle he’s already solved. Not much, these things, but they make up his better nature.  
  
He’s lived more substantially in one month than he has in fifteen years. That thought he holds onto. He needs her to be sure that he means what he’s doing.  
  
There’s so much more. Things he maybe would’ve liked to see her do – put up flannel wallpaper, rock a toddler on a tree-swing, answer a call from home – but Marie has accepted all a man like Logan can give anybody he loves. The chance to live better off because of him, inevitably without him.   
  
Only – Hell, if he can’t cop to it now, as the last bit of his too long life is sucked out of him to be put to decent use, then when? – He would’ve stuck around this time. He would have. And maybe, a piece down the road, neither of them paying too close attention, Logan would’ve given his life to Marie a different way.  
  
The excruciating miracle of the here and now proves too much for his mutilated flesh. Logan yields to incremental death.


	5. Know where the bodies are buried

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She pans the upset faces of the self-styled X-Men, defenders of blessed humanity,   
> and their blinded protégés. “Oh, the secrets that I know...”  
> – Rogue –

Awe is a palpable force that hums up her shivering spine to numb her overburdened mind. The world is astonishingly calm in the wake of the frenzied spin of searing metal and vehement purpose. Her hands are her own again. Light is distinguishable from dark. The taste of salt is on her lips.  
  
Rogue is standing high on a pedestal, taking quick and easy breaths. Below her, Logan is motionless where he lay down.   
  
The incoming jet blows back her hair. Rogue cannot take her eyes from Logan’s face. The enormity of his gift, tremendous and heavy, bows her shoulders. Voices yell her name. She doesn’t want them to break into this moment. They want to know how she is.   
  
The answer is invincible.   
  
Palms up, she claims the metal of Logan’s bones to raise him into the jet’s open hatch. Rogue reads Jean’s startled worry from above – If Erik’s powers are inside her, what else of him does she carry? – and compounds the marvel others have made of her by leaping into effortless flight.   
  
Inside the cramped jet, Rogue follows Jean’s clipped orders with the clear, simple lethargy of a dreamer caught between asleep and awake. She maneuvers Logan’s arms so Jean can cut off his uniform at his torso, tilts a chair into a makeshift gurney.   
  
Storm leads Rogue by the elbow into the seat one over and buckles her in sideways as best she can. “She’s is barely responsive. She may be drugged.”   
  
She shakes her head. Nope, all better. Look what she can do: Turn her chin, and Logan’s inert head mimics her movement so she can watch his face.  
  
While Jean sets her telekinesis to work securing an oxygen mask and applying gauze to gaping, draining wounds, Rogue gently squeezes the metal in Logan’s fingers so it’s like she’s holding his hand.   
  
“What’s the status back there?” Cyclops calls out edgily from the pilot’s seat.  
  
“Pulse is faint. His healing factor’s reversed itself – ” Jean’s words die on a note of distress. The display of power that before seemed like second nature weakens.   
  
Storm catches a thick strip of gauze before it can slip and puts pressure on the wound beneath. In a steadying tone, she says, “What can we do?”  
  
“He needs a transfusion.” Jean is soaked in so much of Logan’s blood, she’s forgotten that cause of death is never the snakebite, always the slow poison.  
  
Jet engines give a slight jerk as their speed picks up. Unease rolls over in Rogue’s stomach in slow motion. She feels separate from herself. Something terrible looms behind her head. She has to keep stock-still against the horror-filled urge to look back, or else she’ll lose her balance.  
  
The abrupt sound of her name makes her shoot out her hands to keep her from toppling over.  
  
“Logan can’t wait for a defibrillator, but his adamantium is too thick. I need you to try to compress it. Rogue? Can you do that? I need you to focus, sweetie. That’s it. Right here.”   
  
Where Jean’s hand indicates, Rogue pushes in.   
  
“One, release. Two. Three – Good. Again. One, two, three…”  
  
Logan still has a pulse when the X-Jet touches down in the underground hanger. Jean, clearly noting how much effort Rogue’s palpitations have become, concentrates hard enough to lift Logan’s heavy frame herself.   
  
Rogue’s arms and legs hang inanimate. She should really move them.   
  
A thick, leather glove cups her chin and directs her watery gaze somewhere vaguely around Cyclops’s nose. “God. What did he do to you?”  
  
Her vision further blurs over. Logan or Erik?  
  
Cyclops unbuckles her and scoops her into his arms. His gait as he carries her to the med lab is even, but Rogue’s lulling head is still jostled by each step. When she’s propped up on a cot, she lets it fall to her chest.  
  
Quick shadows crowd her.   
  
Kitty gasps, “Oh my gosh.”  
  
“Girls, get back. Rogue’s in bad shape.”  
  
“She’s completely catatonic,” Jubilee diagnoses.  
  
Kitty ducks down to get a look at Rogue’s face. “No, she’s crying.”  
  
“Girls. Back. What are you even doing down here?”  
  
From somewhere behind Rogue, Jean calls, “Scott, I need you.”  
  
“We were visiting the Professor,” Jubilee replies, but Cyclops is already across the room.  
  
“Logan’s O-negative.” Universal donor. Rogue herself is AB-positive, the universal parasite.  
  
Cyclops indulges himself with a brief noise of irritation before unzipping his uniform to offer his recent tormentor a lifeline.  
  
In a whisper pitched high by drive-by car crash distress, Jubilee tells Kitty, “A little blood isn’t gonna do much for a dude who looks like he got put through a woodchipper.” Jubilee sounds like she could hurl. “Wolverine’s about to kick the big one, isn’t he?”   
  
A flinch turns into a shudder.  
  
“She can hear you,” Kitty berates loudly.  
  
The line on the heart monitor is audibly slow.   
  
“Ororo, watch the blood – and hold this…” Electricity revs up. “Clear.” Jean takes a moment to say, “Try not to worry, Rogue. His pulse is much stronger than it was. You did a good job.”  
  
Rogue made Logan’s heart beat. That’s a poetic thought.  
  
White-hot mortification shoots straight to her fingertips. Poetic, noble – names given to elevated perversions to make what’s ugly seem beautiful. All that blood…The bottom of the cot crumples under her hands. No such thing as a clean sacrifice. And there’s no virtue in lesser evils. She can bet when Logan committed suicide on her he didn’t stop to think how long she’d have to watch him die.  
  
“Worth it.”   
  
She doesn’t know how those words came out of her mouth, but she crumbles on them completely. Suddenly, she’s shaking and crying with more abandoned sincerity than she’s allowed herself since the day she sent David to the hospital.   
  
“Worth it?” It’s a cynical, sobbing question. She twists herself back. “What if it wasn’t?”  
  
Mistake. Behind her isn’t Logan, but the void. Her fall is months in coming.  
  
Bare skin pinwheels out of her way. There’s nothing to stop Rogue from smacking her skull against the floor with solid precision. Uncountable see-through toes curl horror, kneecaps jut out all around her.   
  
Kitty reaches out with her bright blue cast. “Rogue…”  
  
The monster crawls over Rogue in the dark.  
  
“Don’t touch me!”  
  
Jubilee doesn’t hesitate to drag Kitty back.  
  
“Don’t touch,” Rogue sobs, struggling to her knees. “You did this – I just touched him. I didn’t mean to – It’s your fault – It’s not my fault!”  
  
Storm edges forward to offer a blood-smeared glove to help Rogue wobble to her feet. “We know it’s not. We know.”  
  
“I said stay away from me!” Rogue shrieks, skittering into the empty space between the prone forms of Logan and the Professor. “You should’ve listened.”  
  
“I’m sorry – ”  
  
Rogue hugs herself. “I had to know. It could’ve been psychosomatic – I am not psycho. My body, my decision. That’s what you promised! – How could I have known…You need so much more help than I can give you.”  
  
“Out on a limb here, but I don’t think that’s Rogue,” Jubilee shakily observes.  
  
Posture gone haughty, Rogue quips, “’I am vast. I contain multitudes.’”  
  
Jean meticulously divides her attention between scrutinizing Rogue and reapplying bandages that don’t stay white for long. “Everyone keep very still and try to be calm. She’s having a schizophrenic episode.”  
  
“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you, my dear?” She pans the upset faces of the self-styled X-Men, defenders of blessed humanity, and their blinded protégés. “Oh, the secrets that I know...” Her hand comes to rest beside Charles’ head. “You keep your children so ignorant, old friend. Do you think they’ll turn on you? “  
  
In the half-second she’s peered down, Jean has a sedative making a beeline for Rogue’s throat. She plucks the needle out of the air and snaps it in half. “It’s painful to see how far he has held you back. You could be transcendent.”  
  
 _What are you afraid of?_  
  
Rogue’s attention is jolted to Professor Xavier’s static expression.   
  
“I ain’t afraid.”  
  
But outrage gives way to validation.   
  
“So it’s true. There are mutants who can enter our minds.” In her unease, she addresses the more familiar party. “Tell me, Dr. Grey, why shouldn’t I, why shouldn’t the American people be afraid?”  
  
Jean Grey’s head lifts. “Senator Kelly?”  
  
“That madmen, his ‘old friend.’ He assassinated a US Senator and tried to murder a young mutant more afraid of herself than anybody else could ever be. So, do, tell me, what stands between us and chaos? A prayer? Your goodwill? This school? You might not advocate licenses to live, but do ascribe to a different brand of control: Diplomas.”  
  
It’s Storm who answers, “Every school in America teaches ethics, Rogue. We don’t institutionalize values. And we can’t fix you, because there’s nothing wrong with you.”  
  
Hissing, Rogue slides her hands through her hair erratically. This whiteness is not innocence, but the mark of an angry God. “Nah, she got them demons. I see ’em in her. Crawlin’ in, curlin’ up. Makin’ a nest all in her insides.”  
  
“Mutations are based in science,” the redheaded witch counters. “They aren’t specters preying on people in the dark.”   
  
 _What are you afraid of?_  
  
Oh. Rogue lowers her hands. Still itching for movement, she begins to pace around the Professor. “The dark? That what you’re gettin’ at with this cryptic whisper bullshit? So, what about it?”   
  
No answer.  
  
“Come on, old man. You got everybody in the room lookin’ at me like I’m sproutin’ heads.”   
  
His silence looms.   
  
Rogue whips around to the dumbstruck spectators. “What?” She’s invasion of the body snatchers. Worse, it’s like they’ve never seen her before. The look is called the I-knew-you-yesterday-but-now…? and it’s a popular one down in Meridian. Wetness streams down her neck. “Quit starin’ and get out.”  
  
Logan’s comforting presence. She comes up to stand behind him, at a loss for how to reach out to him. His struggle for life is narrated by his heart monitor. Beep. Be-beep. Be-beep. Beep. Rogue carefully places her the top of her head against his.   
  
That rhythm again. Me. Awake. Aware. Me.  
  
Warmth settles on her back. She accepts the blanket, and Jean releases her telekinetic hold. The med lab’s door swishes shut, leaving Rogue and Jean the only conscious people in the room.  
  
Rogue’s mind is a bruise. What is she afraid of? The dark, yes. The void and the personalities in it. Her monster. But she made up those things. They’re names she’s given her actual fear, which itself is two-fold. The girl with the plan and the girl with the lost eyes. One feels the urge to strike out on her own as intensely as the need to breath; the other suffocates on worry, knowing that no one gone is unforgettable.  
  
Alone. Lonely. Strength exists there somewhere, but Rogue has submerged herself in weakness.  
  
She took their strength. She welcomed their conversations, in spite of herself. She invented how they fill the dark and feed the monster.   
  
Only now she’s losing herself to those interactions self-designed to keep her separate.  
  
Rogue wipes snot on her sleeve as she looks up to Jean for confirmation. “He can’t die.”  
  
Very honestly, she answers, “If he survives the night, he’ll make it. You can stay down here, but I will have to sedate you.”  
  
“Not too much,” Rogue compromises. “I got things to sort out.”  
  
She takes off her cloak and her shoes, while Jean prepares a bed for her in the far corner of the room where the lights are dim. Rogue submits to the needle, then curls up on her side, facing the wall.   
  
“I heard him, too. The Professor. I find he’s never far away when I need him most.” Jean rubs Rogue’s arm. “I’ll be right here…” Her presence is already fading.  
  
For the first time since her mutation manifested, Rogue dreams.  
  
Night terrors visit her from the past – Desolate faces behind barbed wire, a rusted needle jabbing flesh. A gun trained at a girl tearing at her headscarf, translator saying she was raped by an American soldier. The agony of boiling metal seeping through bone over the clink of champagne glasses.   
  
More and more, their nightmares, too. Mutants felling a giant robotic sentinel – what project Wide Awakeawake has deemed humanity’s last line of defense. Herself, locked in a mental institution, unable to recognize her even own mother. Kneeling in Logan’s blood in a red-lit motel. Her skin to his claw, both of them on the edge of death by each other. Underneath all that, she hears her name. Logan’s voice, her momma’s. Calling out to her. Marie! Marie, Marie, Marie…  
  
When she was a child, Marie used to dream the monster under her bed was crouched on her chest, forcing her to scream and scream in silence, praying her momma would hear her somehow and come running. She never did.   
  
Now, again paralyzed and screaming, she has to relearn how to distinguish what is real from what is not.   
  
An eternity until it’s over. She fights her exhaustion, her compulsion to stay down.   
  
She sits up. She touches her face, hugs her elbows, wraps her fingers around the bottoms of her feet. The disconnect has been erased. Rogue has been away from her body so long, the feeling of return is an odd sensation. She might be bigger on the inside now, but it’s still home.  
  
It’s going to be a long, complicated battle to take back her sense of self. But she can start by renaming who she is inside once more time.   
  
“What kind of a name is Rogue, anyway?” She never stopped being Marie.  
  
Logan’s chest rises and falls regularly. Awe – and gratitude and bewilderment and devotion – swell her racing heart so big she can’t look at him. She’s is flustered by the feelings that led him to his sacrifice because he is.   
  
Still feels worth it, and this time she thinks so, too. Finally, she’s found somebody as invincible as she is.  
  
Getting centered, Marie stands up to reacquaint herself with the world outside her head. There’s a change of clothes and a laundered cloak neatly stacked for her on a table. Jeanie let herself fall asleep at her desk with a pencil between her teeth. The Professor’s cot is empty.   
  
Alls signs that things are going to be okay.  
  
Marie hangs the stack of clothes over her elbow on her way toward Logan. He’s still wrapped up, but some of his wounds, like the one across his forehead, are nothing more than red scratches.   
  
“Give me a minute, sugar.” She slides her bare fingers through Logan’s hair before she heads out the door.  
  
It’s light out but too early for the halls to be anything but empty. The Professor, himself again in white collared shirt and suit jacket, is expecting her when she opens his office door.   
  
She’s struck for a moment by those secrets that she knows. The Professor is himself again but also someone more. But Marie finds she can respect his privacy by shifting her focus to who he is to her: that rare thing, a person who understands what she’s going through and genuinely wants to help.   
  
“Mornin’, Professor.”   
  
By the way he watches her take a seat, she knows how glad he is to see her well. “Good morning…”   
  
She lifts an eyebrow. Marie is her name, but Rogue is for the rest of the world. Nothin’ personal.  
  
The Professor steeples his fingers in acquiescence. “Rogue, I have a lot of news for you. To begin, I’ve just spoken with Dr. McCoy. Magneto is under strict custody at Hiram Prison, where a plastic cell is being constructed to contain him. The effects of the machine never reached Ellis Island.”  
  
“Five guards lost their lives. Telford Porter. Henry Gyrich, Senator Kelly.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Still.” If only clean-cut wins counted, there’d be no such thing as victories. Or heroes. Much as he begrudges them, Logan proved the world wouldn’t be better off without heroes by turning into one. “I’m alive, and so is Logan.”  
  
“You’re more alive today than you have been in a long while, I think. I sense Logan’s personality at the forefront of your mind, but the rest seems to be completely at peace.”  
  
“Whatever you did worked. All that fear talk. I figured out I’m my own worst enemy and…I dunno. I stopped forcin’ the others down and just let ‘em be. It was horrible – and it’s gonna be horrible – but it’s a start.”   
  
“Last night, you survived Erik Lehnsherr’s nightmares in so many different ways with more grace than can be expected of any one under the circumstances. I’d call it an excellent start.”  
  
Marie scrubs at her face. “I don’t know how I got so wrong inside.”  
  
“Mental mutations are the most difficult to handle. Perhaps because evolution has not leaped forward enough to make the mind comfortable with so much intangibility. When I was your age, I battled with insanity.”  
  
“But you taught yourself how to control it.”  
  
“Control isn’t a lesson. It’s a lifelong process of negotiation. Sometimes I feel I’m losing an intrinsic connection to my physicality…As I said, it remains a negotiation.” His thoughts and his gaze return to Marie. “You’ve been engaged in this negotiation as long as you’ve been a mutant. People react differently when you touch them. Erik held onto you just as long as Logan did but remained conscious. You accepted Logan’s gift, but you rejected as much of Erik as you possibly could.”  
  
The ghost of her pride ticks the corner of her lip up. “Sometimes it’s not hard to take just a little. There’s a difference I can feel sometimes. Especially in mutants.”  
  
“Perhaps the difference is between life-force – memories, personalities – and certain…we could call them genetic-based skill-sets, as in a human’s ability to run fast or a mutant’s gifts. Life-force correlates to consciousness, skill-sets to how much of their abilities you retain.” The Professor contemplates her like a puzzle.   
  
Marie shifts uncomfortably. It’s too soon to start relabeling herself. “Yeah, I’m real fascinating. But you said you had news?”  
  
“I do. Dr. McCoy has informed me that, after hearing your story, the International Mutant Rights Initiative contacted Jim and Lisa Danvers. The Initiative wants them to file suit against Southaven.”  
  
Marie lets out her held breath. “Magneto had Mystique steal evidence the Southaven evidence to make me think dying for his bullshit cause would be my greatest revenge. It’s all on a laptop in his lair. I can’t get to it no problem.”  
  
“Yes, I see. I’ll will have it taken care of immediately. But what you must consider is how much of a role you wish to have in the proceedings.”  
  
“You mean if I mind havin’ my name in the paper.”  
  
“That, and the Danvers have requested to meet with you before they agree to file suit.”  
  
She swallows back a throat-gut twinge. That’s the one she never figured. “When?”  
  
“They’re flying into New York City today. Scott will escort you to their hotel, if you agree to the meeting. If not, Dr. McCoy will persuade them to continue without you.”  
  
Marie pushes back her chair. “Lemme think on it.”   
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
“Not for now. Come back when you’re ready.”  
  
She goes straight upstairs to Logan’s room. The cigars he normally keeps on his nightstand aren’t there, so she roots around in his bag where a few loose ones have settled on the bottom. Even the familiarity of the scent under her nose relaxes her. Unfortunately, the large inhalation also gives her a whiff of herself. Shower first, smoke later.  
  
Marie has gotten used to symbolic gestures, so she takes her time washing away the madness.   
  
Clean enough for fresh starts, she wipes the fog from the mirror. Against her reddened skin and dark mass of hair, the bleached white strands have an almost preternatural glow. She’s heard of people’s hair turning white because of fear. She figures that’s what happened, and decides to own it. When people look at her hair, they’ll see that she’s been as scared as anyone ever could be – and not only survived but become all the stronger for it.  
  
That’s the plan, anyway. It starts with looking the Danvers in the eye and telling them how sorry she is for their loss.   
  
Who can say where it ends. Maybe in jets and fancy uniforms. Magneto and Kelly have given her insights into the coming war – and made her certain Professor Xavier’s hero squad, uptight geeks that they are, at least got the right idea.  
  
Under the sink she finds a blow-dryer and a hairbrush. She takes time with her appearance, because she’s fashioning a persona. A better, faster, wiser Rogue. Long black opera gloves, tight dark jeans and a black belt with shiny silver buttonholes, gray lacy tank under a dark green button-down rolled to her elbows and her cloak to go over it. She empties Logan’s hiking pack and picks it up. His cigars and John’s lighter go in her pocket.   
  
Before she heads out, she checks herself out in the full-length mirror. Overall effect: feminine and tough. And older. Definitely older. Her eyes roll up from her curvy hips to her hint of cleavage. “Lookin’ good, darlin’.” It’s a strange thing, making herself blush.  
  
Her roommates are still in bed when she comes in. Marie just needs her toothbrush and some underwear and another shirt. She’s got a soft spot for her damp, ratty Converse – ew, the money stuffed in there is probably so gross – but there’s a whole new selection in the closet.  
  
At the noise, Jubilee sits up in bed and stares.  
  
Marie holds a gorgeous black leather fuck-me boot against her bare foot. Perfect fit. “Mind if I borrow these, Jubes?”  
  
“Uh…Power to you, I guess.”  
  
Kitty is awake now, too. Her eyes are wide and watery. “…Are you okay?”  
  
“Peachy-keen. How’s the paw, Kit-Kat?” Marie zips the boots up like butter and takes a few steps. “These feel expensive.”  
  
Jubilee props herself on her pillows with a slight snort. “They were liberated from a Christian Dior. Consider them a gift. Mazel tov on the quick recovery.”  
  
Marie puts a cigar between her teeth and lights it expertly. “A sheynam dank,” she replies on her first exhale.  
  
“Girlie, I hate to notice…”  
  
“Concern appreciated.” She waves away the smoke curling in front of her face. “It’ll fade.”  
  
Kitty hooks her arms under her knees. “You’re not leaving, are you?”  
  
“Nah, the Professor just has some things for me to square away in the city.” She hoists Logan’s pack to her back by one strap. “Keep your snot-noses clean.” She raises a fist. “And keep the pride.”  
  
Jubilee shakes out her bed-head. “We’ll sure try, Grandpa Rogue X.”  
  
By now, sleepy-eyed kids have started wandering the hallway. The wide berth they give her doesn’t feel like fear – Because it’s respect. Marie exhales a long puff out of the corner of her mouth.   
  
The Rogue has already become legend.  
  
Door to Cyclops’s room proves irresistible. She pushes it open and catches him doing his morning exercises in just a tiny pair of boxers. Logan thinks of him as “pretty boy” in a belittling way, but from Marie’s point of view…Damn.  
  
Cyclops is awkwardly frozen under the force of her very Wolverine-like leer.  
  
“Professor needs you to give me a ride later on. You’ll find me in lab with your girl.” Marie tilts her head to better see the curve of his ass. “Nice. Keep it up.” She takes her sweet time closing the door.  
  
And that, dear Logan, is how you render the fearless leader of the X-Men speechless. Win.  
  
Marie puts out the butt of the cigar in a plant in the entrance hall before taking the elevator down to the med lab.   
  
Jean is on the phone, her back to the door. “Scott, I’m sure she wasn’t looking at you inappropriately.”  
  
The buzz of Cyclops’s voice turns insulted.  
  
“That wasn’t what I meant. Of course I find you attractve.” Jean sounds exasperated. “…What do you mean ‘Logan’s influence’?”   
  
Oh, that is too rich. It gives their cockfights a whole other connotation.  
  
Jean turns around to Marie’s out and out snickers. “Um, what? – No, Scott, she’s here. I have to go.” She puts down the phone.  
  
“For the record, I was checkin’ him out. Nothin’ wrong with a little pretty. Don’t tell Logan I said this, but that’s kind of my type.” Rogue eyes Jean up and down, too, for good measure.  
  
Her hands stop suddenly on their way to fix her messy ponytail. “Um, hello. Rogue. How does your head feel? Any headaches?” She digs around her desk. “I know I get migraines, so I have plenty of pain relievers.”  
  
“Nice thought, Jeanie, but I’m right as I can be.”   
  
The good doctor goes back to her patient. “I’ve monitored Logan’s healing ability very carefully. His recovery is faster by the hour.” She lifts one of the bandages to run her fingertips along the roughly knitted skin underneath. “See?”  
  
The dedication is flattering. But that’s her man lying there, so outside the med lab Red better keep her absurdly large hands off if she knows what’s what.  
  
Possibly catching her drift, Jean takes her damn touchable skin away. She messes with Logan’s IV drip instead. “You know he won’t be happy if you’re gone when he wakes up,” she comments.  
  
“Should just be a night. Scooter’s gonna give me a ride to Manhattan later to meet with Carol’s parents and the Mutant Rights whatever.”  
  
Jean sends a smile of encouragement. “I hope it goes well. As I’m sure IMRI will tell you at length, a trial like one against Southaven could be a huge step forward for Mutant Rights.” She pauses. “More importantly, I hope you get the sense of closure you need out of it.”  
  
“Yeah, me, too. Can I get a minute?”  
  
Jean finishes up what she was doing. “I’ll bring Scott down. After I apologize.” She gives a rueful smile, almost like she and Marie aren’t teacher and student, adult and kid. But friends. Which they could be, someday. That’d actually be nice.  
  
When she’s gone, Marie puts the hiking pack down and takes her place beside Logan. “Hey,” she whispers, resting her gloved hand on the left side of his chest. “I know you don’t like big shows of gratitude…So, thanks.”   
  
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if he woke up right now? But his steady heartbeat has to be enough. He’s here and he’s not, like how he is in her head. Maybe it’s another way he’s giving her the space to draw her own conclusions.  
  
His dog tag is laying in a pile above his shoulder. She picks it up and presses it to her lips before fastening the chain in place behind his neck. She settles it against his skin where it belongs.   
  
“I’ll be back before you know it.”


	6. Whistling past a graveyard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He closes her fist around the dog tag  
> curled into her cupped palm. “I’ll be back for this.”  
> – Logan –

Scent returns first. Then it’s sound, the tap-tap of long nails on a keyboard. The noise stops just short of driving him out of his head. Dark orange light filters through his eyelids, plastered shut. Roof of his mouth tastes like Sabretooth’s armpit. The air is cool against his bare chest and feet. All five senses in working order and then some. He’s got zilch in the way of energy, but fuck it. Not bad for a dead man.   
  
He inhales through his nose. Still can’t smell Marie, and that…well, it ain’t reassuring.   
  
Something keeps him calm, though. Maybe it’s his last bit of faith in a karmic universe. If a guy like Logan’s going to be allowed to keep on existing, the world needs a sweet thing like Marie to balance him out.  
  
A chair wheels back. Heels click. Jean fusses with the bandages on his chest, marvels at the unbroken skin. Seems like she might’ve became a doctor just as an excuse to feel people up.   
  
Logan doesn’t let her know he’s conscious until she runs her fingers over his stomach. He sucks in a breath and stops her hand. “No. No, that tickles.” He opens his eyes to a relieved smile.   
  
“Hey.”  
  
“Hey.” He can’t raise his voice much past a whisper.   
  
“How’re you feeling?”  
  
Like somebody sliced him open navel to neck and hung him upside-down to drain. “Fantastic.”  
  
“That was a brave thing you did.”  
  
That was never the point. “Did it work?” He can tell by Jean’s demeanor Marie must be alive. In what kind of a state is what he needs to know.  
  
“Yeah. She’s fine.”  
  
Fine. He closes his eyes. Thankfulness doesn’t begin to describe the emotion spreading out from his chest. She’s fine, and he’s fine. They both made it through. He’s completely unprepared and overcome. Too good to be true is supposed to be exactly that. It’s the one he never figured.  
  
Jean is elaborating, “She took on a few of your more charming personality traits for a while.”   
  
Past the lump in his throat, he wheezes out a laugh. He can just imagine.  
  
“But we lived through it.” A smile in her tone, Jean lightly teases, “I think she’s even more taken with you.”  
  
He cracks his eyelids. Fifteen years of no attachments tells him to dodge that loaded observation like a less indestructible man would a bullet. Something outrageous would do the trick – you can tell her my heart belongs to someone else, jumps to mind – and then Jean’d go ahead and put him in his place. No responsibility in flirtation from a safe distance.  
  
But he hasn’t forgotten his last regret. It’s another kind of miracle, the fact that he even wants to stick around. He can’t let that go.   
  
Jean’s expression shifts, but he knows she’s not surprised. She sensed how much Marie means to him before even he did. She called it “complications.”   
  
“Logan, you and Rogue – ”   
  
He can tell she’s worried that Marie’s not ready, or that he isn’t. And maybe she’s right. But it’s not like he’s getting any older. He’ll wait. Long as it takes to be sure.  
  
“How’s the Professor?”  
  
Jean takes his close of subject with characteristic grace. “He’s good.”  
  
“Good.” Logan picks up her hand and kisses it. She made sure he survived, so now he can start living.  
  
She gets him out of the doctor stuff she’s got him hooked to. He pretends not to need the help she gives him to sit up. He can’t believe he’s still dizzy.  
  
“How long have I been out?”  
  
“A couple of days.”  
  
Jesus. He lets out a growl as he rubs his face.  
  
“You recovered from the brink of death in two nights and a morning.” Jean gets him a cup of water. “Don’t sound so put out.”  
  
He puts back the cup, while she riffles around her desk.  
  
“So.” He runs his still-fuzzy tongue over his stale teeth. “Where is she?”  
  
“With Hank McCoy in Manhattan. The International Mutants’ Rights Initiative is hoping to push the suit against Southaven through to the Senate Select Committee on Mutants before Congress breaks for recess.”  
  
Her choice, he reminds himself, but that doesn’t stop the dread from washing through him. “Her name splashed all over the news yet?”  
  
“So far, she’s staying behind the scenes. Carol Danvers’ parents are the ones filing, so they’re getting all the press.”  
  
“What about Magneto?”  
  
“The unidentified girl he kidnapped from the train station is being reported as ‘vaporized’ by the machine, which was nonlethal in intent. The official story for the press is that Magneto, after breaking Vanisher out of Hiram Prison, was betrayed by mutants in his own ranks, and that led to his capture.” Jean looks up with a smile. “The suspect ‘Red Laser Man’ is considered at large.”  
  
Logan snorts. Still not as stupid-sounding as Cyclops. “Bet Scooter just loves being the villain.”  
  
“As long as the X-Men remain anonymous, this school can keep providing a safe refuge for mutant children. That’s all he cares about.” No mistaking that proud tone.  
  
She comes back around to hand him a business card with a number on the back.  
  
“What’s this?” he asks, taking it.  
  
“Rogue took Scott’s cell in case things with IMRI went long.”  
  
He thumbs the edges of the card. “Still a thief.”  
  
“Reformed. She asked for it. I think it’s a sign of trust. What you said was right. Once she found one person to believe in, trusting other people hasn’t been so tough. You know her well.”  
  
Logan never tried to get to know anybody before. With Marie – he would never call it effortless, but it was easy in it’s own way. Natural. Maybe because she’s had his number from the beginning. They are a lot alike in the right ways. From that, they can build something good.   
  
“You got a phone?”  
  
After Jean gives up on teaching him how to dial out, she does it herself and leaves him with a ringing phone line.  
  
Marie picks up on the second ring. “Logan?”   
  
“Yeah, it’s me, darlin’.”  
  
Muffled voices echo in the background. “Excuse me, I have to take this,” she murmurs. It’s a few more seconds before a door shuts and she’s back on the phone even more breathless. “Sugar, you better never scare the ever-lovin’ hell out of me like that again.”  
  
Logan lowers the phone a bit and looks up to suppress his derisive half-growl. He puts the phone back to his ear. “Same goes double for you. You’re walkin’ the straight and narrow from now on. Got it?”  
  
“You will, I will.”  
  
Shit. He’s never sleeping a peaceful night again. “How you doin’ over there?”  
  
“Okay. Carol’s parents…They’re real good people. I mean, I knew they were from her memories. But…” Her pause is nervous. “They haven’t seen the security footage yet. IMRI viewed it yesterday, and the Danvers’ll watch it this afternoon. I don’t know if I should be there.”  
  
“I can pick you up in an hour.”  
  
“Thanks. But I do want to be there after. I’m gonna give them Carol’s tags back. It’s the least I can do.” She sighs, but it doesn’t feel forced. “You know what? As awkward and uncomfortable as all this is…Talking about it – No, doing something about it – It’s helping. I feel better.”  
  
“That’s the best thing you coulda told me. I’m real happy for you.”  
  
“I’m still sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up. I’ll be back tomorrow, though. I know you’ve got that deal with the Professor.”  
  
“I’m not goin’ anywhere ‘til I see you.”  
  
He can all but hear her grin. “’Kay. If you get bored, you can always amuse yourself by asking around about what I got up to during my short but memorable ‘Rogue-as-Wolverine’ performance art period.”  
  
“Lookin’ forward to it. Take care of yourself.”  
  
“You, too. Oh, hey, Logan? Just between us, I’m ‘Marie’ again.”  
  
Logan shifts the phone to his other ear. He knew that already, somehow. Maybe because she sounds more sure of herself than he’s ever heard her. “I’ll call you later. Marie.”  
  
When he hangs up, he takes a pathetic limp around the lab to get the blood flowing to his legs again. Faced as he was yesterday with a whole day to prowl around this kiddie playschool, all he wants to do is tear up the Danger Room. But, loathe as he is to acknowledge it, he’s still not operating at a hundred percent.  
  
He stops in the hallway to swipe another sweatshirt, then heads upstairs to find the Professor. Logan may not be leaving yet, but he’s still owed answers.  
  
Xavier’s trail leads him outside, where he strides barefoot across the gravely concrete like it doesn’t bother him.  
  
Cyclops flashes him a too quick glance as he loads up the Professor’s chair in the back of a Cadillac then steadfastly ignores him.  
  
“Ah, Logan, I’m glad you caught us. Wonderful to see you up and about,” Xavier says from the passenger seat.  
  
Logan’s lean leaves smudges on the Cadillac’s shiny black frame. “You, too, Chuck. Where you headed?”  
  
“I’m to visit Magneto at Hiram Prison.”  
  
“They just lettin’ him have social calls?”  
  
“Under the impression that I am a psychologist consulting with the FBI, yes.”  
  
Can’t say fairer than that.   
  
“I haven’t forgotten our meeting. But I’m afraid I have not had time to gather all the information I could. Since your intention is to stay until Rogue returns…”  
  
Cyclops shoves himself into the driver’s seat and slams the door.  
  
“Yeah, it can wait until tomorrow.” Logan steps back so he can see past Xavier to Cyclops turning over the engine. “Try a smile, One-Eye. The world don’t need ugly. Ain’t ya glad I pulled through?”  
  
A flush spreads over his ticking jaw. “Ecstatic. Goodbye.”  
  
Logan watches him speed down the lane. Eh, forget it. No use wondering what new has crawled up Cyclops’s butt when so many things have already died in there.  
  
He puts a head to his ringing forehead. Christ but he could use a drink. He needs shoes, though. Mansion Estates, Upstate New York probably isn’t the kind of place that boasts a lot of drive-thru liquor stores. Land of the free, his ass.  
  
Logan trudges back upstairs for a change of clothes. On his way, the smell of ash and unwashed socks gives him the idea for a detour to the delinquent’s room.  
  
“Where d’ya keep booze?”  
  
Pyro jumps half a foot, spilling processed orange-colored styrofoam and dark soda on the rug between him and the linebacker kid. He smears the crap around his gaping mouth on the back of his hand. “Uh…I don’t – ”  
  
“I wasn’t born yesterday. Gimme everythin’ you got in your stash, and we’ll keep it between us.”  
  
Palms up as to ward off an attack, Pyro gets to his feet. “What, you want my pot, too?”  
  
“Liquids, Sparky. I’m thirsty.”  
  
“It’s up on the roof.”  
  
“Waitin’.”  
  
Pyro tries to play his hesitation off as cool when he edges past Logan’s looming presence in the doorframe. Once out of immediate striking range, he starts to jog toward the emergency exit.  
  
The sound of ripping paper puts Logan’s attention back on the other guy. “John had a run in with Rogue yesterday,” he says, showing off his artist’s rendition.   
  
Cartoon Marie – her white streaks, intense eyes, and curves exaggerated for effect – has a sweaty, teary Pyro up against a wall by the throat. A cigar hangs from her bee-stung lips, inches from his nose. The caption reads: “Treat her like a lady.”  
  
Amused eyebrow cocked, Logan folds up the paper and puts it in the pocket of the sweatshirt. She’ll get a kick out of it when he gives it to her later.   
  
Definitely explains some things. First Cyclops, now Pyro. Marie may be better for Logan’s reputation as a badass than he is. Gonna have to rectify that.  
  
The opening notes of  _Sports Center_  catches his interest.  
  
“You.”  
  
“Pete Rasputin – Colossus.”  
  
“Yeah, good meet. I’m gonna need that TV.”  
  
Logan puts Colossus to good use hauling the forty-inch down the hall and setting it up in the room he’s staying in.   
  
A few minutes later, Pyro shows up with an obvious bulge under his shirt. “I brought us the snacks, too.”  
  
Logan takes the clanking sack from him and shoves him out the door.  
  
Colossus walks out with no fuss. See? It’s the scrawny ones who are the real dumbasses.  
  
On the dresser he dragged over to the bed, Logan sets himself up a not half-bad minibar. Everything he needs in reach easy reach, he props himself against the pillows with a satisfied rumble, Fat Tire and cashews in hand.  
  
He points the clicker. NASCAR gets five minutes to start with the fires before he switches over. Commercials. Alf hunting down a housecat. When did there become an entire channel devoted to  _TV Guide_?   
  
MSNBC catches him with the headline: “Mutant on mutant violence – even more deadly to humans?” Sensationalist crap.  
  
Next channel over, a trio of doughy white guys are lined up by split screen the better to shout over each other.   
  
“Public safety?” the one with the fattest head blusters. “How is keeping us ignorant about the danger we’re in keeping us safe? In forty-eight hours, one mutant – ”  
  
Left screen interrupts, “Be fair, there were several other mutants involved in the plot – ”  
  
“But there was one clear leader,” Right screen counters. “With enough power to – ”  
  
“Exactly what I was saying,” the butts in. “One mutant. One mutant escapes from a standoff with New York State police, breaks into the most top-security prison in the country, and takes over the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of our nation’s freedom – And then nothing!”  
  
“Because nothing happened. Whatever his diabolical plan, it was a dud,” Lefty says.  
  
Righty frowns deeply. “Innocent people still lost their lives. Possibly a young girl – ”  
  
“’Possibly,’” middle fathead enunciates. “We’re left asking why. For what purpose? It’s been days. Where’s the explanation the public deserves? All we have are unfounded – ”  
  
Logan flips forward to CNN. Hank McCoy and some Dr. Kavita Rao sit at a desk with a bearded anchor called Wolf Blitzer. Give it five years and a name like that’ll probably get him arrested on suspicion of being a mutant.   
  
“While I hugely respect Dr. McCoy’s insights into the mutant condition, as he himself is a carrier of the mutant gene…”  
  
McCoy coolly adjusts his glasses at that backhanded strike.  
  
“…from a purely genetic point of view the mutant gene is ticking time bomb. Scientifically, the mutant gene is directly responsible for an increase in children born with gross physical deformities and the skyrocketing rate of infant mortality all over the world.”  
  
“’Skyrocketing’ is a bit strong, and I would hasten to add that infanticide has everything to do with those ever-increasing numbers. Socially speaking, a lack of understanding and compassion is more to blame for these unfortunate crimes and the ‘grossness’ of these ‘deformities’ than the mutant gene itself.”  
  
When Rao doesn’t have an immediate response, Wolf brings the discussion around. “If we could, for a moment, get back to the question of the day. Is it possible that this machine – what some are calling a ‘doomsday device’ – could have triggered genetic mutation in ordinary people? Admissions from the terrorist suspect himself have led investigators to this conclusion, but analysis of the machine’s wreckage has yielded little information.”  
  
“Frankly, I believe that’s because there is no scientific way that a machine such as that could have worked. The mutant gene is no more something that can be artificially created than it is something contagious.”   
  
Bull and shit. No room for truth in politics, even from the supposed good guys.   
  
Logan uncaps the Captain to pour himself a stronger drink.   
  
Quick channel flicks until he finally gets to the sports. Baseball. Lot of guys past their prime standing around in stupid pants spitting into the dirt. Not to mention, game itself is slow. Still, boredom suits the shape he’s in, so he leaves it on.   
  
He doesn’t know what inning or how many drinks he passed out in, but it’s ESPN Classics by the time a persistent knock rouses him.   
  
“What?” he calls out roughly, muting the TV.  
  
Storm comes in carrying a not at all unwelcome tray of not food. “Evening, Logan. You slept through dinner, and Jean said you should eat.”  
  
Logan scrubs a hand over his face, indicating with the other for her to put the tray down next to the booze.  
  
“Where did all this contraband come from?”  
  
“Gods of necessity.”  
  
She frowns, her mind clearly compiling a list of the most likely suspects among her blessed students.  
  
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure there’s not a drop left to corrupt any minors.”  
  
There’s a quarter inch of rum at the bottom of the bottle Storm taps. “Well on your way, I see.”   
  
Logan pulls the tray of pasta and dessert on to his lap. “Call it a lifelong dedication to the best interests of the youth.”  
  
“Interesting you should say that.”  
  
His fork slows. Storm’s got her hands clasped in front of her and her back is straight as an arrow. A serious-discussion-eminent pose if he’s ever seen one. Best interest of the youth – one guess who this is going to be about. It doesn’t surprise him that Jean and her were clucking to each other like a couple of hens.  
  
“This is a year-round school. We operate on a quarter system separated by breaks for the ease of matriculating new students. Classes will be starting again soon.”  
  
Logan nods seriously. “I know what you’re gettin’ at, and I agree. I owe myself that GED.”  
  
Storm will not let herself laugh. “Do you think this is a conversation any teacher wants to be having?”  
  
Discomfort needles him. “Look, you’re real far ahead of yourself. And you’re talkin’ to the wrong guy. I don’t make anybody’s choices for ‘em. If it were my choice, she wouldn’t be this close to bein’ thrown to the lions.”  
  
“I don’t care much for the politics of it myself,” Storm admits. She steps backward toward the door. “I know I don’t know you very well, or Rogue, and it’s not my place…to interfere. But you didn’t see her after. It was heartbreaking. The amount of trauma she’s been through doesn’t heal overnight. She needs your friendship, but she also needs to be here. And you need to know that.”  
  
Piece spoken, Storm leaves silently.  
  
Logan twirls his fork, then lets it clank against the plate. Hell. He does know that. But it serves him right for trying to take Marie’s recovery at face value.   
  
Digital clock reads nine-fifteen. He leans over to pick up the portable phone. The number is in the pocket with the drawing. Now, to dial out…9-1 – Another 1’d get the police out. He hangs up and tries again. He gets it on the fourth attempt.  
  
“Good timing, sugar,” Marie answers. “Just got out of the shower.”  
  
“How was it?”  
  
He opened himself up for a double-entendre, but she doesn’t take the bait. A sigh and a mattress flop.  
  
“Long. Anxious. They watched the tapes in private. They were both still crying when they came out. I gave them Carol’s tags. You know what they did?” She sounds on the verge of tears herself. “They hugged me. They – They saw it as Carol reaching out to help me escape. You know, her last heroic act. I n-never thought of it that way.”   
  
She pauses to get a hold of herself. Long, shaky breaths.   
  
“They’re so different from my parents. The way they see the good in things. My momma’s too scared of…I don’t know…life. Daddy, he cares how things look more than how they are. Everybody had practically forgotten I was adopted, until I turned out to be a mutant and he started reminding people.”  
  
Marie snorts. He can hear her stand up and start to pace. It’s what he would do, if he had the energy.  
  
“Adopted. When I was fifteen, my best friend and I got caught at a dance with wine coolers. She had a divorced mother, but what was my excuse? Ah…adopted. Explains everything. Never mind that I was three and don’t remember anything about it. ‘Course, now there’s the family legacy of teenage runaway syndrome, so who knows? Apparently, she left me with her father – I found this out at Southaven – Anyway, he ditched me. Guess I was beat up and everything.”  
  
Logan simply listens, knuckles against his teeth.  
  
“If they hadn’t had all the medical records, I wouldn’t believe it. It feels like it happened to someone else. Less than that. I have those kinds of memories. This feels...like a Lifetime movie I wish I never watched. It doesn’t make up any part of who I am.”  
  
“You’re right, it don’t. It ain’t written down anywhere that you gotta be the sum of what other people’ve done to you. Not even close.”  
  
“My psychiatrist at Southaven thought my repressed memories were what made my mutation turn out they way it did.”   
  
“What d’you think?”  
  
“I want to think she’s full of shit. She made me feel so…powerless.” With an aggravated noise, she throws herself back on the bed. “You know what? Screw her. I like the Professor’s take better – He’s all, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ I can work with that.”   
  
“Good for you, kid. You make up your own mind.”  
  
“That supposed to be a pun?” A hint of a smile breaks through. ”It’s what I’m gonna be working toward. I want to maybe try meditation again. Know any yogis with a lot of free them on their hands? I promise not to push you anymore.”   
  
“Promise goes double for me.”  
  
There’s silence for a little while, but it’s a comfortable one. He pours himself a drink and listens to her breathe.  
  
“I’m so exhausted,” she says. “How are you feeling?”  
  
“My bones ache. I think this is what old feels like.”  
  
Marie chuckles throatily. It’s a real appealing sound.   
  
Logan’s appetite is back, so he starts on his dinner. “How’s the food where you are?”  
  
“Five-star. We had dinner on the roof tonight. I think that’s something my restaurant needs. Rooftop seating.”  
  
“I bet it’d up your insurance premiums.”  
  
“That’s a sound business mind you’ve go there.” He hears her switch on the television. “ _TV Guide_  said  _Dirty Dancing_ would be on TNT tonight.”  
  
“Can’t believe somebody actually uses that channel.” Logan turns to TNT but keeps it mute. He can hear the movie well enough from her end, and he doesn’t need One-Eye walking by recognizing the music. And he would.  
  
“Oh, it’s the end. Best part anyway. Here it comes, here it comes – ‘Nobody puts baby in a corner.’ Yes. So sexy. ”  
  
Tight pants pulls the girl up on stage to deliver a list of things she taught him just by be willing to sleep with him.   
  
“I’m still wonderin’ if he taught her to do those ‘lifts,’” Logan comments.  
  
“Are you actually watching this with me?”  
  
“No,” he lies, and hits the recall button one too many times. He’s back on CNN, and Southaven Mutant Treatment Clinic is splashed across the screen, along with images of the blonde Air Force Captain he knows a lot of half-truths about. A familiar blue face has him turning the volume up. “The real Sheryl Maxwell is on the news right now talkin’ about Southaven.”  
  
“I know. I hid up in my room while they did the interview.”  
  
“That mean you’re not gonna testify?”  
  
“I don’t know. I want to, in a way. But…You know they’re saying I died up there? It might be better to keep it that way, or at least…vague.”  
  
The double sound of CNN plays as they both watch the interview. Nothing too in-depth or controversial – Indecent experiments and lots of evidence. Tomorrow the defense will start in with the attacks.  
  
“Do you think there’s an evolutionary advantage to blue skin? On non-psycho bitches, it’s pretty…What the – “  
  
At the bottom of the screen, “Breaking news: Kidnapped Senator Robert Kelly found alive.”  
  
“That’s not possible! Unless – Blue psycho bitches.” She lays back heavily. “I thought you gutted her.”  
  
“Not well enough.”  
  
“Mystique is so twisted. You know she tried to tell me she wanted to be my mentor? And – Well, you know.”   
  
Yeah, he knows. That mocking tone – “I kissed her goodbye for you.” His claws itch under his skin just remembering it.  
  
“…God. I don’t even have the capacity to think about this.” Marie switches back to her movie.   
  
He follows suit. There’s a big dance number going on.  
  
“You, uh, you remember everything I remember. From the other night?”  
  
“A lot of it. I remember you were thinkin’ about me.”  
  
The smugness is already there. She’s going to be hell to live with.   
  
He doesn’t bother taking a sip of his drink, because he knows whatever’s coming out of her mouth next is going to make him spit it out. “So?”  
  
“So…” Her drawl thickens considerably. “Yes, Logan…Logan, I will marry you!”  
  
Instead of doing a spit-take, he sloshes his drink on the blankets and sputters on air.  
  
Her throaty laugh is back full-force. “Smooth your mutton chops, sugar. I’m a good Southern girl. We don’t get married until we’re knocked up. And even then it’s shotgun traditional.”  
  
Christ. “Yeah, yeah, keep cacklin’,” he grouses, although the image it evokes of the Professor rolling up to him, pointing a sawed-off double barrel all dignified is pretty damn funny.   
  
She quiets down to watch the final scene play out.   
  
“This it? Your perfect happy ending?”  
  
“I’m not saying they go out and get a mortgage, but, yeah, they have an understanding.”  
  
That makes him feel better. Seems like they have one of those already.  
  
Logan, always the masochist, goes back to the news. This time he sits forward to enjoy it. “CNN’s estimatin’ all the damages done to the Statue of Liberty.” He whistles under his breath. “Millions.”  
  
“Shouldn’t that kind of vandalism constitute treason? Don’t you feel even a little bad?“  
  
“Darlin’, I’m Canadian.”  
  
Her answering giggles are arrested suddenly by a voracious yawn. “Exhausted,” she repeats. “But I almost don’t want to sleep. I’ve started to dream again. Nightmares, mainly.”   
  
“I’m sorry, kid. I never meant to do that to you.”  
  
“It’s not just you. I mean, it’s probably a good thing in disguise,” she amends, clearly realizing reminding him about the sheer volume of horrors going on in her head isn’t a comfort. “Like a more natural coping mechanism.” Marie yawns again. “I have a different kinda nightmare for you – I might’ve flirted a little with Cyclops, and he might’ve blamed it on the you inside my head. So…”  
  
“You better be damn well kiddin’ me.”  
  
“’Fraid not. Sweet dreams, sugar. See to you tomorrow.”  
  
And she hangs up, leaving him with the severest case of mood whiplash he’s ever felt. How that woman can go from crying one minute to laughing the next, being all gushy romantic over a stupid movie and then turn around to bust his balls…  
  
Nothing to do but finish his drink. Won’t be boring, whatever their understanding eventually leads to, or even the getting there part. That’s a fact he’s counting on.  
  
Logan sleeps well into late morning, but when he does wake up he’s shaken the last of his debility. With that energy, he takes the longest shower of his life.   
  
So long, in fact, that when he steps out of the steam-filled bathroom, he’s missed Marie coming and going. On the nightstand, there’s a six-inch plastic Lady Liberty souvenir someone took a pocket knife to – holes in her face, part of her crown sawed off, flame part of the torch gone.   
  
The note Marie propped on it reads, “A monument to the lengths you went to. Hope you love it. P.S., The Professor wants to see you in the lower levels. I’ll be in the rec room when you leave.”  
  
Not only has she returned is hiking pack, she’s repacked it for him. New cigars and Pyro’s lighter stick out the top.   
  
Hell. He expected a conversation, at least. Maybe some yelling. Waterworks as a worst case scenario. Instead, she’s practically booting him out. He his to chalk it up to her knowing him even better than he knows himself, otherwise he might actually be offended.  
  
Bag feels heavier than he would’ve packed, but he just switches the souvenir for the cigars and zips up the top.   
  
Xavier meets him at the door to the room the X-Men use to poorly plan their vigilante operations.   
  
Logan just nods at the Professor’s greeting. Restlessness itches at him, so he leans against the holographic machine drawing a map with magnets.   
  
“There’s an abandoned military compound at Alkali Lake in the Canadian Rockies close to where we found you.”  
  
He recognizes the area. It’s not hard to commit the general direction from his cabin to memory.   
  
“There’s not much left, but you might find some answers.”   
  
If there’s anything there, he will find it. It’s more than he’s had to go on in fifteen years. And he needs answers to his past more than ever, now that he wants to have a future.  
  
“Thank you.”   
  
“Are you going to say goodbye to them?”  
  
Them? They’ll get along just fine without him. There’s only one goodbye that counts, and she’s upstairs waiting.  
  
“You’re always welcome here,” Xavier makes clear. “And on the X-Men.”  
  
Logan shrugs, surprising himself with even that level of commitment. “I’ll let you know what I find.”  
  
Out of the elevator, he trains his ears on the rec room.   
  
More news he wouldn’t have given more than a passing thought to a month ago: “The Mutant Registration Act lost it’s main proponent today in the dramatic reversal of Senator Robert Kelly, who until this time had provided the loudest voice in the cry for mutant registration.”   
  
And there it is. The reason McCoy and the rest of the politicians are going to let this one slide. Jean, Cyclops, and Storm seem surprised but not by much. It makes Logan even more relieved Marie came back here instead of letting herself get drawn into the game. For now at least.   
  
“In a related story, the body of Senator Robert Kelly’s longtime aide Henry Gyrich was found today…”  
  
She’s playing foosball. Her and Pyro seem to have made up, they’re teamed up against the one-pawed mouse and the boyfriend. Marie looks good, and he doesn’t just mean the low-cut top. She’s looking happy and put together and in a decent place.  
  
“…Coroner’s reports seem to indicate that Mr. Gyrich was mauled by a bear – ”  
  
She’s looking right at him.  
  
He nods, indicating that she should meet him outside, and leaves the mansion.  
  
She catches him between doors. “Hey.”  
  
The expression on her on her face, the light in her eyes. It all comes flooding back, like a punch to the gut. He could’ve lost everything.  
  
“You runnin’ again?” Marie hangs onto the doorframe a moment before sauntering up to him.  
  
Logan adjusts the strap he’s holding higher on his shoulder. What kind of question is that when she packed him up herself? “Not really.” He meant it to come out sardonic. What is this? Nerves? Hell. “I have some things to take care of up north.”   
  
His hand reaches out to touch her before he quite gives it permission. He comes up short, lightly stroking the shock of white in her hair.  
  
“I kinda like it.”   
  
She’s turned a scar into a badge of honor. That’s his girl.   
  
His protectiveness doesn’t fill him with shame anymore, but it does make it hard to look her in the eye.  
  
“I don’t want you to go – ”   
  
Logan’s ready for that. He unclips the chain around his neck, and picks up her gloved hand. He closes her fist around the dog tag curled into her cupped palm. “I’ll be back for this.” Real soon. He holds her gaze, lets her see that he means it.  
  
Marie’s pleased, knowing grin warms his back as he steps outside.   
  
Passing the fountain, he takes a moment to place a well-deserved cigar between his teeth. He did good back there. Didn’t come on too strong, didn’t have to explain himself. This understanding thing, it’s minimalist, classic. Suits him.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, the chrome on the Harley glints in the sun. He lifts an eyebrow. That’s just poor parking on Cyclops’s part. And the keys are in the ignition. Might well have put a bow on it.  
  
Logan’s really getting into the feel of the ride when movement behind the trees at the far end of the lane slows him down. Someone in a green cloak waits for him against the gate.  
  
“What d’ya think you’re doing?” he demands around his cigar.  
  
“I needed a ride.” She’s squinting over a lopsided smile. “Thought you might help me.”  
  
“You’re ruinin’ a goddamn picture perfect goodbye, kid. Why’d you let me go through all that if you were just gonna try to invite yourself along?”  
  
“’I don’t want you to go – without me’ is what I was gonna say. So you better rethink the word ‘try,’ sugar, ‘cause my clothes are already in your bag. Thing is, I’m a free woman now and I’ve got plans that don’t include being hounded by politics the rest of my life. Can’t be a superhero without a secret identity.”  
  
Oh, that’s fuckin’ stress he doesn’t need. X-Man Rogue, throwing herself right smack in the middle of trouble all the while poured into black leather…Logan shifts himself back on the bike. Yeah. Like he said. Stress.  
  
“What about workin’ with the Professor and getting’ your diploma and all that?”  
  
“Neither of us is leaving here forever. I go as far as you go, them I’m headed to Anchorage. It’s spring break, and I deserve a vacation.”  
  
Marie seems to have all the angles covered. And Logan can tell by that he’s-in-for-it smile, she knows it, too. There’s no saying no to the girl with the plan. If he’d have recognized that fact back in Laughlin City, he would’ve saved himself a lot of trouble.  
  
He gestures for her to get on the bike in front of him.  
  
“You’re letting me drive?”  
  
“Marie, you’ve been drivin’ since the day we met. I’ve just been along for the ride.”  
  
Yeah, she likes that. She settles in nice and close.   
  
Seventeen, he has to remind himself. They’ve got a ways to go before they hit ready, or even figure out what ready means.  
  
She gives him a game grin. “You know, healing factor or not, it’s against the law in a lot of states not to wear helmets – ”  
  
Logan reaches past Marie to rev the engine. “Shut up and drive, darlin’. I wanna go fast.”


End file.
